My Good Hand Plays God

My thumb & index finger

     frame a zero, then an 8

sleeping on its side, & I say,

     Leonardo, show me how

the miraculous scapula

     moves like a torn wing

half-fused, barely unstuck,

     & a life dares to lift off.

Floating rib, boomerang flat—

     if it comes back or not,

I don’t have the stomach

     for doubt & vivisection,

reshaping flesh, muscle,

     & tone into a portrait,

or mock-up of a machine

     glimpsed on the edge

of destiny, a daydreaming

     five hundred years early.

What if, born out of wedlock,

     a silky caul over his face,

Leonardo brushed light under

     skin of oils, science & art.

I could stand like man-X

     moving toward night-

time, feet parted, ready to do

     some one-handed magic,

singing  Judas’s old plea.

     My left hand holds up

a sketch, showing a way—

     good hand & bad hand,

circle half-broken, let there be

     a truce, embrace the fall.

The whole contraption of

     gore & math, just here,

as I go over the blueprint,

     hand raising the brain

to higher order, working

     in the dark, step for step,

hovel to temple, & I draw

     a cross down my chest.