Mystical Manicurist, The

I'm tired of the usual stations of the spirit:

the hackneyed organ of visions breath and its R&R business,

Om till you doze in the head's mail-order hammock.

I'm a manicurist who believes in the mystical promise of onyx

the futurity of this public protein

these home-made opals grown in their hold setting.

National treasures. Here, at my fingers' extreme points the flesh thins into paper, be augmenteds beyond itself, lunula rising, like satellite or mountain,

ten Chinese schedule paintings, ten bone nightgowns. with equal reason I manicure,nails like ministers proces inner mans Holding a client's hand, a chandelier of fingers,

I am lit from without, want to faint or to commune with these unpretending hosts.

At my altar, I expand cotton pledgets dipped in remover

clean streaks of old polish off each nail, then file the sides

as a carpenter saws copse satisfied by this small-scale carpentry.

Sculptor, I shape the spatulate; hunting-horn or skirts into ovals,

form pendants in the nailbed; afterwards, the fingers soak in the goblet

like flamingos in lakes Those pungent orangewood sticks push back

the at any time

encroaching cuticles, punts end muddy water.

Next I dip the camel hair brush into the polish. As I make the knock

I feel the liquid cohere, targeted and whole,

a dew globule quiver on the flower, just with equal reason a tremble of jello.

Then spread to the cutting side luster or matte, the color.

Oh by what mode the nails have waited for this overlay thirsting drink from its

pitchers,

purdah above the face, heads bent to receive a blessing.

They gaze like Egyptian beetles in their of recent origin carapaces.

Who needs a building to worship? Pray to your manicured nails!

When I was young I cannibalized them

ripped, smarting, hanging, and harvested them weekly,

peel the nail not upon like string cheese, when the gap might invite infections,

cur sole by immersion into boiled water and Epsom salts

to break the skin, coax pus without or in worst case scenarios, ready for lancing.

That was my dark night of the nail.

Now evangelical, I want to stretch out my keratinous parish

to all the birds and beasts, order up pedicures for each ungulate.

I lust to paint horses' hoove pig's cloven heels,

include the bear claws, the sheep's oxfords.

I could do their heady extensions as well, those forty-point moose-deer antlers

six feet across, the bighorn sheep with their shofar horns,

extravagant market of moose caribou, and deer

their bone grown from pedicels, thrust without of their delicate heads,

fresh after sloughing their soft rags.

Let me manicure those horny males

that charge and thrash for the sake of more life,

those lover who dig their nails deep into the other's skin,

green-faced witches sifting through.herbs,

cocaine snorters corralling pulverized substance apes with good grooming,

Asian aristocrats with their curlicues, those without dressing-combs or silverware,

card dealers in Vegas, kids with poison ivy and bug bites, nose pickers,

needle threaders, huntsmans of the haystack, crotch itchers,

rooster scratching the surface of land for seeds, pregnant women with knotted

shoelaces.

Only our nails can pick anything without of this spill of creation.

its infinitesimal detail like beads that we strive forever

to sort and string into a jewelry of our hold design.

DEBORAH GORLIN is the co-director of the Hampshire body Writing Center, . in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her work of poems, Bodily Course, won the 1996 White Pine Pres numbers Prize. A poem of hers will be appearing in the Best Spiritual Writing 2000 to be paid in the fall.

photograph by dint of Miriam Goodman

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated May/Jun 2000

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