Research: Journals
The Journal
Past Issues
26.2
Alison Stine
When the Hand is a KnifeDoes it matter if it didn’t happen?
All day I watch my students
from the summer school
play in the old graveyard.
One girl lies down
for her friend’s photographs,
fanning hair over her breasts
as if in a magazine-fold.
Did the officer say to her,
as to me: I don’t know means yes,
and did the nurse’s light,
cast through her legs,
shine clear to the bell-tongue
of her mouth? Because there was
no stopping layer.
We don’t ask truth of fiction,
and I wouldn’t ask my class,
instead teaching: say the narrator,
not you. Because it might not
be you. Because it might
have happened differently,
or to someone else,
but how then to explain
the hand, the memory of touch?
Like soapstone, or the lava
slice my father used for washing,
palm dry-hard, split, stretching
to a maw the neck of a dress
I would not wear again.
Believe me. I am telling you a story.
