Tuesday Poem hosts Bill Nelson's poem Wadestown

Tuesday Poem

There is a hand asleep

under a heavy hip bone.
There is memory of love,
a pip and soft bruises.

I'm not sure how we fit

but it seems this dead hand
is my hand, this angular
body is your body.

continues here...

Editor Saradha Koirala has selected the poem by the Biggs Poetry Prize winner who writes in Wellington. She says of it, '

So much and so little happens in this poem. I love the mystery surrounding who is really present, played out in the dead hand coming back to life. Sleep and memory intermingle and I especially like the lines “I am jerked awake / by a bird I can hardly/ remember”, as they link so perfectly the two elements working together here: a definite, palpable physicality of body parts and the intangible, inexplicability of not quite speaking, not quite remembering; a “slow code” tapped out by something solid. ' 

After reading this excellent poem and commentary - click into the Tuesday Poem sidebar for poems chosen or written by Tuesday Poets - a fantastic array of the classic and the brand-new. A great way to spend a Tuesday.