Hands of Women is a poem from  Laurie Soriano’s first full-length collection of poetry entitled CATALINA ( Lummox Press). This 112 page book packs quite a wallop in addition to featuring a very nice preface by singer/songwriter Cris Wiliamson of Seattle, WA. “She is a master of a particular punch at the end of all the lines, which she lays out perfectly, and then comes that uppercut which slays you. She is a marvel to read, and my joy to brag on her every chance I get.”

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Hands of Women

I.

Let my body move you down into her hands in latex gloves
helping you work your way out after you’ve crowned,
now a sharp shoulder, now your slippery midsection, and then
the rest of you in a wet glad swoosh.

They are doctor hands veined with science but woman soft
and those firm hands will catch you, she’ll hold
you to her ribs as the cord is addressed and then lift you up
and swing you to my chest, and then I have you,

Hello baby, hello you baby girl, and you peer at me,
squinting, and we share a silent joke (me through tears),
before I tuck you to my breast, and you
competently do what is needed

as I feel her hands below, delivering the afterbirth,
then tending to my birth wounds before
she pulls the gloves off with a snap, then
jots statistics on a board.

II.

I offer my sad cracked back to her.
First her hands only listen, persuade my body
to tell where it’s crying, and then with her steel muscles
she orders it to breathe

as the candles flicker, and in this dim room
a voice chants Ashanti Ashanti, and my face
is being ground down into the cradle
as my back unclenches, and sighs.

Sometimes we talk, as she kneads a shoulder, a calf,
my face directed anonymously toward the floor, voice raspy
as with no one but a lover, skin warm
and wanton, hair a wild mop. She delivers me

back to the world all slippery and smiling
and I float home, where I find your teen-aged self
reading curled up on the couch, and I slide next
to you and take your hand lightly in mine.

– Laurie Soriano

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