Sonya Lara
Hands of the Depressed
Hands: the instrumentality of a person-Oxford English Dictionary
Inside
they pose placidly,
one covering the other,
two limp fish
with purple veins faded
like old watercolor strokes,
the art of dry scaled
existence measured
in length unmoved.
Outside
the wind peels scales
raw until movement
becomes indigestible.
Placed in pockets,
annuli spins like a rolling
hourglass, time like
winter petals, lost.
The Separation
I’m dull as a fish floating,
fat lips unmoved by rusted hook
seeking pressure. With touch,
my scales rip like wet paper,
an armor easily undone. Skinless,
I sin, the pink of my flesh an
unfaithful sunset to be weighed
and sold to a new pair of hands.
I Live Inside a Light Bulb, Dangling.
Nights are cold
and days lonely, the filaments
borrowed spider legs crisping
with your flick of a switch.
The pinned insects on your wall
eye my hands jealously,
shifting purposely in their
Christ-like pose, guilt a
heat of its own. Cheek against
the warmed glass, I remember
the belly of your palm, the freckle
by your knuckle an
estranged pupil staring.
Here, I am to be safe, with
counted blinks and anchored feet,
but your hands have lied before.
Sonya Lara served as the Associate Fiction Editor for The Madison Review at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she received her BA in English-Creative Writing. Currently, she is the Co-Founder, Poetry Editor, and Social Media Manager for Rare Byrd Review, an Editor-at-Large for Cleaver Magazine, and an MFA poetry candidate at Virginia Tech. Her work has appeared in Prairie Voices and Wisconsin’s Best Emerging Poets: An Anthology. For more information, visit sonyalara.com.