Fingers

by James Long

Fingers

Always first to arrive, like armies or spring rain,

their conversations with the invisible mind frighten me:

how fast they could grab a glovebox flask or tap

a Google search for Modigliani nudes. I spread mine out,

crowned with their half-moon claws, white-capped and holy

as nuns. I wonder if they’re big enough to match other men,

or scarred enough to make my grandfather proud.

And though most days I don’t believe in heaven anymore,

my fingers don’t know this. Perpetually the point

where hope extends, they feel for pulses and forgiveness.

These which I use to steer a car in careless moods

have been led in blindness to sweet labial folds, but never

gripped a pistol or balled up to beat a cheekbone. See them

resting limp on my jeans, clean as mafiosos.

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Poet James Long’s poems have appeared in Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, Appalachian Review, Still: The Journal, Kestrel, and are forthcoming in Pirene’s Fountain, Good River Review and I-70 Review. A two-time winner of the West Virginia Writer’s Inc. Annual Writing Contest, he’s attended the Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman, and he recently completed an MFA in poetry at Spalding University. Long lives, works and writes in Charleston, West Virginia.

Artist Shelbey Leco is a New Orleanian artist who is a fiction writer, and sewer. Most of her work focuses on mixed media portraiture art. Her art was inspired by her grandmother. When Shelbey was little, she often went through art supplies, which her grandmother could not afford. Instead her grandmother would give her pens, to fill in negative space with patterns from coloring books. As an adult, Shelbey incorporated vibrant color and materials.