If the Hand Offends

Andi Boyd

I have given him my hand but not the rest of me.
 
He does with my hand what he likes.
 
Places it between two pages in a novel by Dostoyevsky
says feel
says there is no such thing as God.
 
Sometimes he leaves it sitting on the table for hours.
 
I watch it from the kitchen where I try to cut lemons
with my teeth.
 
My hand becomes his hand in the dark.
It writes out a word on a pale back.
 
The word is in another language.
It means: Custer’s last stand.
It means: Ozymandias.
 
On Wednesday mornings it shows up
on the back of a milk carton. The fingers
spell out the word missing.
 
He puts it on the name of a town on a map,
he puts it around the button of his pants
and uses it to dig into a pack of cigarettes.
 
There is a name for this—
 phantom limb
 
graveside robbery.
 
(there is a name for this)
 
Hecatonchires.
 
if the hand offends,
 
there is a name for this
 
cut it off.