Featured Poet





Peter Krok

( Havertown, Pennsylvania )

the hand of Adam reaching across 
    to the bearded figure on the Sistine Chapel ceiling 
the hand of Cain after his envy slew his brother 
    and left his violence in those who came after 
hand of Michelangelo lying on the scaffold 
    spreading his brush on the high plaster 
hands of the deaf Beethoven on the keys 
    playing the lingering Fűr Elise 
hands on the fields of Gettysburg erupting  
    out of the mud after the piercing of the guns  
hands pinned on the barbed wire of Europe 
    after the Marne and Verdun and the Somme  
hands, hands, hands, rising out of the air of Dachau 
    and Auschwitz asking a question of the living 
hands of the Florida runaway outstretched 
    over the slain body of the Kent State student 
hands at the Memorial Wall in Washington 
    tracing names in the order that they left  
hands, hands, hands of the missing in Cambodia, 
    Rwanda, Sudan, and so many hurt places

One’s desire is to say something worth saying – to reach out over time and extend one’s hand to the reader. My goal here is to produce a verbal montage using scenes of hands as the symbol.

I like the idea of representing passages of time, collages of images cross-connecting. I am intrigued how M.C. Escher expanded this idea in his artwork, cross-connecting the moment through planes of intersecting scenes in an ever evolving flow though the continuum of time. Hands are a useful and emotive symbol for the individual and the universal.

This poem started as an interweaving of various personal scenes using hands as the centering image – the hands of my grandmother sewing a sock or me walking along the boardwalk with a teenage sweetheart or holding a newspaper on the bus. In developing the use of hands within this personal framework, I thought about images of hands within a universal context. Consequently the poem began to branch out.

The poem then developed from two separate perspectives – the image of hands within the personal and the image of hands within the universal (Beethoven’s hands on the keys, Michelangelo lifting his paintbrush, Cain killing his bother, the Kent State Shooting). In the process I felt that the weaving of the personal and the universal seemed to diminish the personal because of the more powerful images of the universal. The historical took precedence over the personal. The poem as it stands now is an historical montage of hands. The personal segment of this poem is still to be completed.

In my poem “Doors,” which will appear in the next issue of the Blue Fifth Review, the use of doors represents a personal passageway sort of Escher-like collage through time. Admittedly, “Doors” is very different from “Montage of Hands,” yet the connection is Escher who is a model for intersplicing time.

I should mention that I was much influenced by the scenes of boots at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. The scenes of those boots sticks with me. I should add that the scenes of hands in “Montage of Hands” sticks with me too, which is why I wrote the poem. I am drawn to the idea of an historical consciousness.

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