'[Beware: your hand will harm the other]', by Chris Cummins
Beware: your hand will harm the other
Before kindness and mercy shape the air
Into a wrinkled room muttering to its windows.
We are hunting black secrets; freight cars approach
Heavy with wood for matchsticks, and we stop
To salute our cruelty, pulpy and fat.
My father, gravity, heard the rumor of my death,
Went into his room intending to hide
Pretending the shape of inception.
Cheap pens lined paper recalled
The mud and clay sculpted by war
Without memory of a forest or stone
Who would burn their tongues for love?
The beautiful hand that holds the trigger
Chooses honest whimsy over thought
And folds the map it left for you.
Chris Cummins lives outside Buffalo, New York and teaches high school English, creative writing and drama. In addition, he directs plays and musicals and teaches in a film academy, a multi-faced learning experience which includes script-writing, acting and video editing. Although his most recent work focused on the writing and production of two locally performed musicals, his first writing love is poetry. He’s been featured in the Buffalo News, Heduan Review, Book of Matches, Literary Heist, Lotus-Eater, Aromatica Poetica, The Gilded Weathervane, Lothlorien, WordSwell, Goose River Press and other small presses.