by Erin Ann Thomas

On the pad of my ring finger, the brain
of a small burrowing animal,
a colony clustered side by side like
the pills of grapefruit flesh.  

Whorls of my finger print interrupted,
an indent on patted dough or clay, somehow
connected to cell and the blood
that pooled when I tried to bore the tunneler
out with blunted scissor tips.

Always a right hand’s bane,
in high school two snugged up
to the cuticle.  This artist’s hand,
adept with brush and chisel,
in company I slipped
beneath the left.

At twelve, bathing suit skinny
and body mortified, I lay chest up
to the sun, daring this over
displaying the circumference
of wart neighborhoods populating my heel
that smarted when I walked on
pebbles barefoot.

Erin Ann Thomas teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College.  She graduated with her MFA from George Mason University in May 2008 in Creative Non-fiction. In her free time between grading papers and taking jogs around the neighborhood, she whittles away at her first book, a work of creative non-fiction that follows her family history of coal mining to our current national energy crisis. Her poetry has been accepted for publication in Kalliope, Goodfoot, and Lines N Stars.