Strong callused hands
Graceful and slender
Competent and steady,
Working feverishly;
And etched into lines
Moving in sinuous barbarity
Sensuous ferocity.
Beneath their endless efforts
A shapeless bulk begins to breathe
In the flickering candlelight
The hands,
They push and squeeze
Pull and abuse
Forcing life into a mass of mud
Light bounces off the forming curves and angles
A woman’s coiled shape….
Abruptly the hands gentle
They stroke and caress
Soften and massage
The woman stretches slightly
Yawns and settles into her skin.
She is smooth and sleepy
Luxurious and opulent.
The hands turn again intense,
Stay vehement
Turn lushness feral in her face.
Hands careful, forceful
Mold her features.
Lips curve cunningly
As fingertips glide coyly
Eyebrows arch provocatively
As each suggestive knuckle flexes.
Her nostrils flare delicately as the breath of her
dream-laden sleep
Escapes her
And hands rest.
They lay beside the sleeping woman,
On the scarred and splattered table
Beneath the night-darkened window.
Hands covered now with dead and drying clay
Cracking and dusting
Tired now
Spent.
Watching a slumbering temptress
In the flickering candlelight.
Strong, competent,
Graceful, slender
Gentle, intense
Genius hands.
-Genevieve
Perdue