Caleb Curtiss
It is easy to regard the body as a text
and not the object that it is: a reflection
of the algorithm that brought it into being
and allows it to carry on unthought of
like a phantom limb affixed to the mind
by sutures, impeccably sewn.
When she wanted to reach something
beyond her armchair, my grandmother
would extend a long metal arm,
thin and with pincers at its end,
operated by way of a handle with a plastic
trigger which asked the full
force of her squeezing hand before
it would clamp down upon whatever
she intended to grasp: the odd issue
of LIFE left on a davenport, a plastic yellow
bottle filled with her prescription.
Other times, she would use it to nudge
the framed black and white photograph
of my grandfather kept just out of reach
on the side table next to her chair.
See him there, still standing back then,
in his Army greens and a thin smile,
the Belgian sky gray above him as a cloud
of dust settles at his feet, his hands
dangling at his sides or tucked into his pockets
(which, I can't remember) as a two and a half ton
Studebaker idles on behind him. Its humming
engine, a dim shadow passing over his face—
what could have been a plume of smoke, or
just as easily, the slight structure of a wing
dividing a tranche of sunlight above him.