September 2015
My early education, at the hands of Dominicans, informed me of all things possible and impossible right out of a few pages of Plato's Phaedo, set down over four-hundred years before their savior walked the earth. As far as I may wander, I am pulled back to those few tenets: the transitory nature of human existence, the necessity of denial, the tensions of extremes, the hope of the sublime. I live in Tucson with my wife Jane Catherine, a watercolorist, and with our dog, Irish. My more recent work has appeared in The North American Review, The French Literary Review, and others.
F i e l d W o r k
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Brown Hand These are my father’s hands. They could not be browner from the sun, from the long days of picking and sorting. Other kids pass by and wave on their way to school. What does a field need to be fed? How much stooping, bone-ache, bent spines, scarred skin would it take to satisfy that hunger? The field is endless. It is always hungry. It will take everything possible, and return only heat, until every crop, my father’s hands are dried up, consumed. Green Hand Pilots smile and nod. The company gives me white gloves made of cotton, like the cotton in the fields. I spot the rows that haven’t been dusted. I wave the white flag and the plane comes in low to make another pass. I took my older brother’s job when he couldn’t flag anymore. The spray stains my gloves green. My parents are proud. Red Hand My family is my squad. We liberate. That is our mission always. We take from the dead what they don’t need: jewelry, cattle, food. Never cry on a raid. Rifle and machete are the tools of Justice. I know I am doing the work of God when my hand is red. |
©2015 Michael Gessner
