Tom Healy's What The Right Hand Knows

Four Way Books has introduced me to two wonderful collections of poetry and today I will feature Tom Healy’s What The Right Hand Knows, published by Four Way Books. Tom Healy lives in New York and Miami and has appeared in The Tin House, BOMB, and other journals. This collection of poems is edgy, full of wit, surprise, tragedy and was a thoroughly enjoyable read. I have countless poems I’d love to share with you but I will narrow it down to a few and hope that you will look for this book in stores or use the link below to capture a copy for yourself:


Oh, Hi Dad

I thought I had killed him.
But here he is,

come to life so quickly,
despite the scarce crop

of talk, how long
words went hungry,

the distance I’d driven
to dump his memory.

But here he is,
the fruit of famine,

an alphabet emptied
of ice or apology.

Look where it comes!
Here he is.

Taste and eat.
Smile and wave.


This poem is the way I imagine it to be when you cut ties with someone close to you and that person then returns to your life unexpectedly and inexplicably. It is obvious that the poet didn’t actually kill his father but perhaps all memory had been carefully blocked out of mind only to have to confront the father face to face. The ending is what intrigues me most. Despite “killing him” the ending portrays trying to put on a happy face with the ending line of “Smile and wave”, trying to bury the negative thoughts when confronted with the very person he had tried to bury away in his mind and instead showing off a smile. Isn’t that just the way of human nature? Torn between putting on the “happy face” or the “angry scowl” when confronted with someone you had long since abandoned on purpose?



What The Right Hand Knows

I am not in stereo.
Deaf in one ear,

I am unable
with any accuracy

to pinpoint clamor
and quiet.

Argument reaches me
only on my left or

marching down
the center of the street

cleared
of other traffic.

I lose the background,
the sotto voce.

I lose scratch,
whisper, rain,

white noise, color
if it’s muted,

the good gossip
unless I turn to it.

Stories must
circle west

toward twilight.
I have no east.

I learned this
on an ordinary afternoon,

my parents fighting,
torching one another,

and the only place
to run for cover

was standing there,
covering my ears.

But my right hand slipped—
to nothing.

Nothing?
I rolled up the gates,

brought my fingers
flat again, lifted

one, then the other.
Both hands. Neither.

I don’t know why I didn’t
cry or

tell anyone
the sound wasn’t working.

Suddenly strange,
hearing and not—

I kept the sugar taste
of that secrecy

well-hidden
until eventually

Armstrong
landed on the moon

and our family’s first
color console

broadcast the Earth
reflected in the bubble

over the astronaut’s face—
itself another

television
attached to the body

of the best father
of all possible worlds.

Did you know,
I said to my mother,

that the moon’s dark side
has no sound?


I love the eeriness of this poem, the rude awakening of discovering you have no hearing in one ear and then not speaking a word of it. There are wonderful lines that bring to life the absence of sound, how “Stories must/circle west/toward twilight./I have no east.” The parents, distracted: “torching one another” do not notice their son testing out his ears by placing one hand alternately over and then away from his ear and never do notice as time goes by with the poem. I love the ending, a child’s imagination of the “moon’s dark side” having no sound and pairing it with the idea of his own hearing loss. I think this is a beautiful poem that brings out the innocence of a child’s perspective in such a discovery.



An Act of Forbearance

i.

You’re the type
who’d murder.
I’m the one
who eyes
his own wrists.
Should we shed
and spend life
thwarting
one another?

ii.

Compare apples
and oranges.

Compare fiction
and breathing.

One peeled,
one bitten.

Which, my spider,
is which?

We swing
in the threads

of this web
waiting

for sting,
for struggle.

iii.

Consider this.
Consider clay
where there
was once a field.

Consider
what it would
have been for us
to flower—

or stealing
the work
of another verb,
to weed.

iv.

I have my doubts
about the alphabet
bending to our will
like spoons.

We’re the ones
always following
like dogs
and their tongues,

fetching for letters,
playing dead
across sentences,
working sad eyes.

Pity me
in the pound.

This poem, although not necessarily joyful, introduces some playfulness in comparing the writer to his companion. One being the type who’d murder vs. one who would murder him/herself, the idea that the other version is a spider and they are both tangled in the same web makes me wonder what the relationship is? The last section makes me wonder if they are both writers as the poet introduces the idea of “the alphabet/bending to our will/like spoons” (an imaginative visual) and the idea of “fetching for letters/playing dead/across sentences.” The ending lines are an interesting metaphor, referring to being the dog mentioned earlier, and I am dying to know what form this particular “pound” takes? Is it the writing desk? The poet’s home? What do you think? Either way it brings out the idea that the poet and his companion are opposites, one being perhaps stronger than the other.

As I said before, there are countless poems I’d love to share with you but narrowed it down to just a few. All of them are interesting and this collection held my interest through the entire 88 pages. You may be able to find Tom Healy’s book, What The Right Hand Knows, in your local book-store or to purchase a copy for yourself for $15.95, not including shipping, use the link below:

http://www.fourwaybooks.com/books/healy/index.php?PHPSESSID=1f484dd61c16c0dd2a69d43f6f13dab0

Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…