Tuesday Poem hosts Bill Nelson's poem Wadestown

Tuesday Poem

There is a hand asleep

under a heavy hip bone.
There is memory of love,
a pip and soft bruises.

I'm not sure how we fit

but it seems this dead hand
is my hand, this angular
body is your body.

continueshere...

Editor Saradha Koirala has selected the poemby the Biggs Poetry Prize winner who writes in Wellington. She says of it, '

So much and so little happens in this poem. I love the mysterysurrounding who is really present, played out in the dead hand coming back tolife. Sleep and memory intermingle and I especially like the lines “I am jerkedawake / by a bird I can hardly/ remember”, as they link so perfectly the twoelements working together here: a definite, palpable physicality of body partsand the intangible, inexplicability of not quite speaking, not quiteremembering; a “slow code” tapped out by something solid. ' 

Afterreading this excellent poem and commentary - click into the Tuesday Poemsidebar for poems chosen or written by Tuesday Poets - a fantastic array of theclassic and the brand-new. A great way to spend a Tuesday.