I wouldn’t tell just anyone this, but I want to tell you.
You see, I’ve loved many men with missing parts.
You might wonder if I have some sort of fetish, but the real
truth is that I never sought them out. The shared hours
I spent with them were of their offering, their initiation. We would touch
in quiet, somber spaces, or in the unforgiving light, as if in a watercolor dream.
Paul played the snare drum solo in Bolero, and you would never dream
he had no thumbs. Born without them. You
would admire his deliberate touch,
the way he held his sticks with just four fingers, parts
fully covered in the junior high band. He’d practice for hours,
embracing those sticks, embracing me, with eight fingers, rhythm real.
Tony possessed no arms, but he was a real
gentleman and the most tender of lovers. He could make me dream
of faraway places, wrapping his legs around me for hours,
hugging me with bends at the crooks of his knees. You
never knew when his feet would massage the small of your back or shoulders, making parts
that ached soft and supple again. By moonlight, especially, he knew how to touch.
One wintry night Tony was driving to Kalamazoo. Had a truck rigged to touch
the steering wheel with his feet, for gas and braking, a real
ingenious contraption. Had a Lazyboy recliner installed in the driver’s seat, the best part.
But he hit a patch of black ice, slammed into a concrete wall. You’d never dream
that anyone could be lost so fast. He had a passion for cigars and baseball caps, I’ll tell you,
and friends and relatives loaded his coffin with these treasures, the procession taking hours.
Leo rowed me out onto Silver Lake, for hours,
on Sunday afternoons. He would always touch
my hair between sips of homemade Quine Mead. You
never knew what other gifts were in that picnic basket. Some real
strawberry preserves, a sourdough baguette, maybe even a dream
of a chocolate éclair from the French bakery. But his parts
weren’t all there. He’d been in Viet Nam in 1970, where young men had parts
blown off all the time. Viet Cong lingering in the jungle trees, patient for hours,
waiting for the opportune moment to attack. Leo never dreamed
that he’d fall prey to sniper fire. Hell, he was hesitant to touch
the trigger of his own gun. But what was real
was the Agent Orange that, years later, robbed him with testicular cancer. You
know, all of them told me that they never dream of the missing parts.
That thumbs, arms, scrotum, return to you only as phantoms in waking hours,
desiring to be touched, to touch. Making them real.
Marianne Peel is a poet and a flute playing vocalist, learning to play ukulele, who is raising four daughters. She shares her life with her partner Scott, whom she met in Istanbul while studying in Turkey. Marianne taught teachers in Guizhou Province, China for three summers, and she also toured several provinces in China with the Valpraiso Symphony, playing both flute and piccolo, in January of 2016. Recently, Marianne was invited to participate in Marge Piercy’s Juried Intensive Poetry Workshop in June 2016. This fall, she journeyed to Georgia O’Keefe’s Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, where she took part in an amazing Narrative Poetry Writing Seminar. Marianne also received Fulbright-Hays Awards to Nepal and Turkey. She taught English at middle and high school for 32 years. She is now retired, doing Field Instructor work at Michigan State University. She recently won 1st prize for poetry in the Spring 2016 Edition of the Gadfly Literary Magazine. In addition, Marianne has been published in Muddy River Review; Silver Birch Press; Persephone’s Daughters; Encodings: A Feminist Literary Journal; Write to Heal; Writing for Our Lives: Our Bodies—Hurts, Hungers, Healing; Mother Voices; Ophelia’s Mom; Jellyfish Whispers; Remembered Arts Journal, Gravel, among others.
–Foreground Art by Claudio Parentela
–Background Art by Thomas H