Vox Populi
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Carol Moldaw: Arthritis
“Save your hands,” my mother says,
seeing me untwist a jar’s tight cap—
just the way she used to tell me
not to let boys fool around, or feel
my breasts: “keep them fresh
for marriage,” as if they were a pair
of actual fruit. I scoffed
to think they could bruise, scuff,
soften, rot, wither. I look down now
at my knuckly thumbs, my index finger
permanently askew in the same classic
crook as hers, called a swan’s neck,
as if snapped, it’s that pronounced.
Even as I type, wondering how long
I’ll be able to—each joint in my left hand
needing to be hoisted, prodded, into place,
one knuckle like a clock’s dial clicking
as it’s turned to open, bend or unbend.
I balk at the idea that we can overuse
ourselves, must parcel out and pace
our energies so as not to run out of any
necessary component while still alive—
the definition of “necessary” necessarily
suffering change over time.
The only certainty is uncertainty, I thought
I knew, so ignored whatever she said
about boys and sex: her version of
a story never mine. It made me laugh,
the way she made up traditions, that we
didn’t kiss boys until a certain age, we
didn’t fool around. What we? What part of me
was she? No part I could put my finger on.
How odd, then, one day, to find her
half-napping in her room, talking first
to herself and then to me, about a boy
she used to know, her friend’s brother,
who she kissed, she said, just because
he wanted her to. “Now why would I do that,”
she mused, distraught anew and freshly
stung by the self-betrayal. So much
I still want to do with my hands—
type, play, cook, caress, swipe, re-trace.
Copyright 2024 Carol Moldaw. From Go Figure (Four Way, 2024).
Carol Moldaw’s seventh book of poetry, Go Figure, was published by Four Way Books in September 2024. Other books included, Beauty Refracted (2018), So Late, So Soon: New and Selected Poems (2020), and a novella, The Widening (2008). Her work has been published widely in journals and translated into Chinese, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish. Wind Above the Weather, a volume of her selected poems translated into Chinese is forthcoming from Guangxi University Press (Beijing) in 2026.
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You’ve expressed so many feelings I have all the time about aging and about arthritis. Thank you. The poem is full of wonderful images and sonics too like “knuckle like a clock’s dial clicking/as it’s turned to open, bend or unbend.” Oh, how well done!
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I really enjoy this meditation on time, aging, silly rules, parental rules, not wanting it to end . . .
Well done.
Charles ________________________________
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Thanks, Charles. Interesting how the meditation begins with a crooked finger and gradually expands to include… everything.
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I’m with you, Bob, though as usual you’ve said ity better than I would.
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So poignant a poem … , as we dare to ask/wonder/mourn before it is late or too late…our bodies,our creativity, our country, our democracy, our seas, our minds…yes, our hands…what can we save? what did our mothers warn us of…before it/we…are all used up…and yet dream of it/us being of use one more time??
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A beautiful comment, Margo. Thank you!
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What a wonderfully and carefully arranged poem–the narrative moving back and forth between the speaker/daughter and her mother until that subtle and powerful ending that brings them together as the speaker finishes “re-trac[ing]” the past, even as she looks to the future.
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Thank you, Robert. What a perceptive reading of the poem! BTW, I enjoyed your reading last night, especially the way you talked about Baron. I wish I’d met him. Obviously he was much loved.
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I, too, enjoyed Robert’s reading, and yours, Michael, and Laure-Anne’s, and Jeanne Beaumont’s. I, too, wish I could have met Baron Wormser. I am thankful to have known him through his work, especially his essays here at Vox Populi.
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Thanks, Christine!
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I’m with you, Bob, though as usual you’ve said ity better than I would.
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