“When do I get my arms back?” asks the boy
as if they were two toys his mother took from him
because they didn’t belong at the supper table
where the boy had to sit still and finish his food
before he was allowed to scrape back
his chair and place his plate in the sink to soak
while he washed his tiny sticky fingers
and then held them out to show
they were clean enough to be given back
what rightfully belonged to him
and him alone
now
without his arms,
without his mother and father
without his sisters and brother,
without his grandma and grandpa,
without his cousins, uncles, and aunts
all blown away the moment his arms
flew from his shoulders
and landed—where?
“When do I get my arms back?” asks the boy.
His skinny left arm with its sharp bony elbow.
His scrawny right arm with its wisp of a wrist.
The blue vein running down his right forearm
that splits like a river flowing past a rock.
The smattering of freckles near his left shoulder
that look like the scattered stars
he counts while listening
to whistling missiles whizzing by
like the one that shattered
his slumbering home
a lifetime ago
or was it only last week
when his father took him
by the hand and led him outside
to point out the man
in the moon whom he reached for
standing up on tippy-toes
with open outstretched arms
(inspired by a newspaper quote cited in Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech, 2005)
_____
Lesléa Newman’s books include the memoirs-in-verse, I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father; the novel-in-verse, October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard; and the children’s books, Welcoming Elijah: A Passover Tale With A Tail, and Ketzel, The Cat Who Composed. A past poet laureate of Northampton, MA, she has received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two National Jewish Book Awards.