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Lauren Kindle

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Generous Permission

”Nothing redeems but beauty, its generous permission,

its gorgeous celebration of all that has previously been uncelebrated.” 

--Dave Hickey, The Invisible Dragon

Welcome to my art blog! The entire archive of posts can easily be found on my Table of Contents on Pinterest.

I’m also a writer. You can find seven art-related short stories here: My Short Stories

Paul Strand, HANDS OF GEORGES BRAQUE, VARANCHEVILLE, FRANCE, 1957, photographPhiladelphia Museum of Art, Permanent Collection

Paul Strand, HANDS OF GEORGES BRAQUE, VARANCHEVILLE, FRANCE, 1957, photograph

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Permanent Collection

Hands

November 17, 2021

Why was she hiding her hands?

Ashamed of her fingernails, curved

like beaks, and terrified that the bird

of death had made his nest in her lungs,

as he had. I wish I had photographed

her hands without a cigarette, or your hands

removing the tumor, the way Paul Strand

photographed Georges Braque's hands

in quiet repose on a stone the shape of

his trepanned skull. The encyclopedic

left thumb reads the letter of the burr hole.

Where have these hands been? Cross-hatched

windows of skin look out over pools

of knuckles narrating line after line

of the hands' work and the life lived.

Between the tender bed and the nails,

the quarter moon of infancy presides,

its sweet face pressed against the keratin shell.

Scaling the dorsal venous mountain range,

these hands have gripped the palms of

fellow climbers. In love's anguished mime,

they are finger birds with nerves of wire.

They could have painted a portrait

of my mother breathing the infinite sky.

— poem by Margaret Campbell

Hands

Margaret A. Campbell 

Published originally in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) January 2013

Poem inspired by Hands of Georges Braque, Verengeville-sur-Mer, France, 1957, by Paul Strand (1890-1976)

Other poems by Margaret Campbell:

The Dust Bowl of My Elbow

Still Life Within the Painter’s Heart

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