Cannibals

The spindly scars of the baseball flirting

in the pitcher’s palm, that caravan of fingers

ready to curve inward toward a plate loaded

with nothing more than Mars dust and mimings

of the catcher, or under the Jumbotron’s

blind eye the hordes spidering around

their foot-longs: these nights, hands remember

their glorious origins, lotuslike in womb-water.

Watch the child offered a popsicle. Watch her hand

pulse for what it wants to hold. To have and hold.

Used to be we chose lots with straw-lengths,

what would decide the fate of the shipwrecked

and citrusless, the hand holding the unlucky hand.

The hand holding just a hand: marbled, mouthward.

Now would be a good time for a sickle. Or sickness.

But how beautiful they look on deck,

spiders on the last thread holding them

like a hand above water, fingers forked.

The empty slingshot of victory must keep nothing

inside. Therefore the seamen eat with such longing,

the food loaded in their hands suddenly weightless,

the water around them an empty plate, and all they have

to do is jump. Life is practice for estranging fingers

from the hands they belong to. All hands on deck.

Above deck, even. Victory is the farthest fingers travel.

But how beautiful they are on the open face of a diamond

scrubbed of its green. How beautifully they beat their gloves,

punishing each dispossession, or from the dugout signaling

the sacrifice. Or on deck. Already the outfielder pulses

his hand, positioned under. Victory praises the fall

of the ball and the hand that keeps the others at bay.

Already the outfielder feels the scars of his last handling,

or the fans’ hands slapping each other for the right to praise

their likeness, or the forks held after the game, the plate, the cup.