• Purchase
Witness Magazine
  • Saṃsāra
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • Archive
      • Past Issues
      • Fiction
      • Nonfiction
      • Poetry
      • Photography
  • Order/Subscribe
  • About
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
  • Submit
  • Search

Nerve Endings Like Strawberry Runners

By Christopher Citro
Poetry•Vol. XXVIII No. 2 (Summer 2015)
    This hand has the skin and fingers of an animal.
    — Jim Harrison, “Patagonia Poem”

    I’m pure and perfectly formed in this clean shirt.
    I see wrinkles along one hand, but am not convinced
    it’s my hand. It does what I tell it to do,
    mostly. So does the dog. Is that my paw
    chasing sparrows in the back yard?
    If I crouch low, keep my teeth covered—
    and, with a little luck, the birdies get
    distracted by glints from a neighbor’s pickup—
    I might crawl close. I can reach out
    and swipe at those birds. I could
    catch one between my sharpest two fingers—
    I might press it down and hold my mouth over.
    With the soft pad at the tip of my longest finger,
    I might feel the heart beating beneath thin skin of the throat.
    If it’s truly my hand—at that moment of contact—I’ll
    let go, watch the bird reach out my other hand to the sky.

Christopher Citro
Christopher Citro is the author of The Maintenance of the Shimmy-Shammy (Steel Toe Books 2015). He is the winner of Columbia magazine’s 2015 Poetry Writing Competition, and his recent and upcoming publications include poetry in Best New Poets 2014, Prairie Schooner, Ninth Letter, Salt Hill, The Greensboro Review, Poetry Northwest, and Verse Daily, and creative nonfiction in Boulevard and Colorado Review. He received his MFA in poetry from Indiana University and lives in Syracuse, New York. His website is christophercitro.com.

Mailing List

Sign up for the Witness email newsletter.



Order & Subscribe

Subscribe to Witness magazine or order individual issues.

Purchase

Submit Your Work

Entries accepted in the fall for the print issue. Check for online issue dates in the link below.

Learn More

© 2006-2020 Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy

  • The Black Mountain Institute
  • UNLV
  • Submit
  • Subscribe
  • Order Issues
  • Contact Us