Monday, May 10, 2010

The Hand is the Puppet

The Hand is the Puppet

The hand is the puppet,
palm gone mouthy,
wrist made throat.

The small body growing,
it would appear,
from your arm

talks with your voice.
No shame here,
everyone contorts

their face to summon
unpracticed accents:
scratchy twang,

drawl swooping out,
a lasso. Like putting
on a sleeve,

our limbs inhabit
miniature bodies
with little resistance,

voices we did not know
we were built with
doing the talking.

3 comments

  1. this is excellent, intriguing and thought provoking. I need to try out a sock puppet.

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  2. "drawl swooping out,
    a lasso" --

    Love this!

    And I agree with Crafty Green Poet, I need to look for my sock puppets (I made some once, for Library Story Times...).

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  3. Your poem, and Terresa's comment, remind me of doing "voices" in library story time:

    "our limbs inhabit
    miniature bodies
    with little resistance,

    voices we did not know
    we were built with
    doing the talking"

    Your poem evokes that process:

    "No shame here, everyone contorts their face to summon unpracticed accents..."

    With or without the hand puppet, our voice and our body becomes another- narrator and characters. It's great fun!

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