Visible Hand

Visible Hand

Chilblain strides

mock the
purposeful promenade
to cubicle abattoirs

.
In djembe and kalimba
beat

ancient forgotten
fingertips

twist
Windsor

knot

garrotes

to lay way for
prevaricative
deathbed lamentations.

The tower

of Violated
Promise

Immolated Hope
Annhilated Dream

soars

With every skeletal

Clasp.

Bone on bone
Assurances

of newborn niggard
Joy

assuaged by Dow Jones
sylphic acclivous

arcings

Towards

certainty
of golden
coffer
coffin.

--Constance Stadler has been writing, publishing, and editing poetry from the prehistoric epoch of print journals to modern e-times. She is currently a contributing editor to the e-zine Eviscerator Heaven. Her most recent work appears in such zines as Ditch, ken*again, Pen Himalaya, Rain Over Bouville, Clockwise Cat, Hanging Moss, Neonbeam, and Gloom Cupboard. As a political anthropologist specializing in North Africa and a violinist, her influences are multiform. Work in formative years with the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks was seminal, but no less so than Sufi Dervish dancers, and the challenges of mastering Bruch's first concerto.