Take the hand
in Basquiat’s Profit I,
each finger
has two joints—
so shall we chill
at yours or mine?
That’s a Mafia trick,
lopping a digit.
This is memory,
an accident
waiting to happen
again and again.
Dude blows off finger
with fireworks
and you watch it
on You Tube,
but let’s not reaffirm
those circuits.
Every accidental hand
is an urban legend,
consider too the clouds,
their white tracery,
chancy if it rains—
I’m trying to copy
a fog like a cat
and paw it off on you.
Lois Marie Harrod’s latest collection Woman was published by Blue Lyra in February 2020. Her Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016 from Five Oaks; her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016; Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. A Dodge poet, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches at the Evergreen Forum in Princeton and at The College of New Jersey. Links to her online work www.loismarieharrod.org.