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The poem “In the Southern Sunlight” is published in Brief Wilderness by Shoe Music Press.

“What is Brief Wilderness?
Other than being another in a series of great small press publications from Shoe Music Press, when asked to explain the title, I’ve said that it suggests the distance between individuals, which is what most literature is about, whether it be a solitary lyric poet talking about how they see the world and others in it, always seemingly at a distance, or longer works of fiction with a set of characters in varying degrees of proximity. Sometimes this brief wilderness is sensual, sometimes practical, but nonetheless this journal seeks to explore this territory.”
-Gordon Purkis, editor

***

In the Southern sunlight
I walked into the sterile
hand symphony of yours.
Before you had a second to resist,
I shot the image with my eye
and moved on
to your next ‘hand pas’.
I saw right through your fingers —
your innocence and inability
for sudden kisses,
your passion for simplicity
and order.
I have recorded till the smallest skin cell
their ‘Rite of Spring’,
exactly as they had revealed themselves to me.
In your hands
I found unstable harmony,
a happiness of milliseconds
that can’t be traced or photographed.
I heard right through your fingers
a symphony
I never heard before,
a symphony of an unborn composer,
played on an entirely new instrument —
the closest to human voice reciting poetry.
The purpose of your hands
is anything
but mystery.

___