Hands

By Sandi K. Johnson

I can’t claim to know the makings of Godly hands:

Perhaps they’re fibers, coarsened by fresh silk or leather, 

resistance to water or bloodshed.

Perhaps deep carving of lines from waxed wool

often pressed onto African dyed cotton.

Perhaps those hands bruise like Lent’s linen

threads with violet weaves, suffocating

living fabrics from seeping through, 

or radiant like golden trumpets,

parading on a rimed Easter’s morning, 

too chivalrous to coil against slick hemlines. 

I won’t burden myself with luxurious hands

that mastered nail beds or upturned gambling tables,

slitting curtains on decor of dispersing lashing.

Yet, like Jesus’s hands inside his mother’s hands,

I, too, easily recognize La Pieta of a momma’s reach, 

quilting my worth within wrinkles of her motherhood—

the raw textile of an immigrant,

her cradling Liberian hands,

harvesting my sour schemes 

into yarns surplus with thickness,

plaiting pleats and ruffles

at her seamstress’s score.

(Oh, how I retain plenty of gathering for warmth,

observing my momma’s suppled creases of her hands.)

Spiral overlaying from a mother’s incurred hands

that even a Nazarene might simply

clasp in any American swamp.

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Sandi K. Johnson

Naturalized U.S. citizen from Liberia. She is a cross-genre writer and English professor in Texas. Holds a BA & MA in English from Mt. Mary University and an MFA in Poetry from Carlow University. Published works: National Book Foundation, Solstice Literary Magazine, The Bayou Review, Watershed Journal, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, Northern Appalachia Review, and elsewhere. Awards: 2009 Solstice Institute for Diverse Voices Prize and the 2021 Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize. Forthcoming publications: Dubeloving Anthology for Immigrant Writers from Dublin, Ireland and Flip The Script Publishing for the Darling Nikki: An Anthology Series, Volume 2 coming out December 2026.