---
title: Rough gloves
genre: verse

project:
    title: Elegies for alternate selves
    css: elegies
    order: 16
    prev:
    - title: Love Song
      link: lovesong
    next:
    - title: Ronald McDonald
      link: ronaldmcdonald
...

I lost my hands & knit replacement ones \
from [spiders' threads][], stronger than steel but soft \
as lambs' wool.  Catching as they do on nails \
& your collarbone, you don't seem to like \
their rough warm presence on your [cheek or thigh][].  \
I've asked you if you minded, you've said no \
(your face a table laid with burnt meat, bread \
so stale it could [break a hand][]).  Remember \
your senile mother's face above that table?  \
I'd say she got the meaning of that look.  \
You'd rather not be touched by these rough gloves, \
the only way I have to knit a love \
against whatever winters we may enter \
like a silkworm in a spider's blackened [maw][].

[cheek or thigh]: feedingtheraven.html
[break a hand]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html
[maw]: serengeti.html
[spiders' threads]: poetry-time.html