Poetry Can Be Hard On Your Hands

I arrived late
to the mind’s eye
poetry group meeting
and I interrupted a critique of a prose poem
about a father tragically
losing his finger
in an lumber yard accident

and before I could shake
the impression of a crushed finger
bleeding and screaming
out of my mind

another writer mentioned
that her father had accidently
cut off his finger one day
and saved it in a clear mason jar
alongside other body parts he had lost
and I did not have the nerve
to ask which ones.

Another poet said
his uncle lost a finger too!
losing sounds so nice
until you walk in another room
and accidentally find it
again

I thought about the time
my oldest son Diego
almost snipped the tip of his index finger off
with the neighbor’s hedge trimmer

his mom Clara put his hand
inside the coffee beans
of a Folgers can
to stop the bleeding
because that is what her grandfather did
on his coffee plantation
when a worker cut themselves with a machete

after rushing to the hospital
to get seven stitches
at the end of the day
the mangled tip was still hanging on
to the end of his finger

I didn’t realize
that poetry
could be so hard
on your hands