~ Delta Poetry Review ~

William Bonfiglio

My Mother’s Hands

She has

my mother’s hands

                split

at the thumbs,

lines dark

with the earth

she’s touched.

She has

my mother’s hands

                coarse

on the beds

of my fingers

and stiff with days

and days.

She has

my mother’s hands

                open

like a dahlia

to feel me,

knit like a flytrap

to hold me inside.

She has

my mother’s hands

                warm

as I remember

outstretched

and seeing

me home.

William Bonfiglio is a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick. His poetry has been awarded a Pearl Hogrefe Grant in Creative Writing Recognition Award, the Julia Fonville Smithson Memorial Prize, and has appeared in American Journal of Poetry, New Letters, PRISM international, and elsewhere. Email: wbonfig@gmail.com