Knuckle Skin

It's fine how skin

over knuckles bunches 

like upholstery. Or like

a stack of wrinkles. 

Epidermal accordions?

Bend a finger, the skin

smoothes itself, stretches

tight. Nice! I would like to

leave you with a final

pronouncment on knuckle

skin but I can't think of one

and anyway knuckle skin

is such a personal topic. 

hans ostrom 2025

Poreville

I host a small city
of mites in my face-pores,
and so do you in yours.
Nature abhors
empty cellular suburbs.

I'm told it's one mite
per pore. No mite
bowling leagues
or metropolitan clubs,
it seems. Just a quiet
city of solitary dining
and solipsistic dreams.

I never hear mite-screams.



hans ostrom 2019

Skin's Stars

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Skin's Stars

Freckles and moles and other colorations
constellate skin’s sky. Imagine connective
lines, then conjure epidermal legends:
huntress of the thigh, magic beetles near
the feet, miraculous bird on the back of
a hand. Or not. Go with the logistical reading,
points on a dermatological map suggesting
deeper strata of DNA, a digital code of
ancient migratory patterns--ah, but also
of collusions with sunlight. Glory be to God

wrote Hopkins (G.), for dappled things,
and skin certainly qualifies: dot-commissioned
by blots and bits of pigment, uncoalesced
pointillist portrait painted on your body’s
parchment, a realistic abstract rendering.
Scars appear like halted asteroids on this
sky, or they try to get a message through
using ghostly notation—something about
the time you fell down on creek-slate or
tried to break up a dogfight with one hand.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom