Inked Stained Hands by Award-Winning Poet Shannon P. Laws

INKED STAINED HANDS

Read me the paper Uncle

Loud enough to hear in the kitchen

Touch it for me, turn those pages.

Aunties and I are cooking the dinner

hands must be kept clean.

But in your place by the fire

the beige recliner squeaks

on the back-beat of your rocking,

toes slide in and out of slippers

leather stretched out and soft

as a first basemen’s glove

Calloused hands turn each inky page

of the Sunday review

headlines shout at us

while we chop onions

-S.P. Laws