HANDMADE
A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each “hand” and fingerprints extremely similar to human fingerprints) are often described as having “hands” instead of paws on their front limbs. The raccoon is usually described as having “hands” though opposable thumbs are lacking. Some evolutionary anatomists use the term hand to refer to the appendage of digits on the forelimb more generally — for example, in the context of whether the three digits of the bird hand involved the same homologous loss of two digits as in the dinosaur hand. The human hand normally has five digits: four fingers plus one thumb; these are often referred to collectively as five fingers, however, whereby the thumb is included as one of the fingers. It has 27 bones, not including the sesamoid bone, the number of which varies between people,14 of which are the phalanges (proximal, intermediate and distal) of the fingers and thumb. The metacarpal bones connect the fingers and the carpal bones of the wrist. Each human hand has five metacarpals and eight carpal bones. Fingers contain some of the densest areas of nerve endings in the body, and are the richest source of tactile feedback. They also have the greatest positioning capability of the body; thus, the sense of touch is intimately associated with hands. Like other paired organs (eyes, feet, legs) each hand is dominantly controlled by the opposing brain hemisphere, so that handedness—the preferred hand choice for single-handed activities such as writing with a pencil, reflects individual brain functioning. Among humans, the hands play an important function in body language and sign language. Likewise the ten digits of two hands, and the twelve phalanges of four fingers (touchable by the thumb) have given rise to number systems and calculation techniques. Many mammals and other animals have grasping appendages similar in form to a hand such as paws, claws, and talons, but these are not scientifically considered to be grasping hands. The scientific use of the term hand in this sense to distinguish the terminations of the front paws from the hind ones is an example of anthropomorphism. The only true grasping hands appear in the mammalian order of primates. Hands must also have opposable thumbs, as described later in the text. The hand is located at the distal end of each arm. Apes and monkeys are sometimes described as having four hands, because the toes are long and the hallux is opposable and looks more like a thumb, thus enabling the feet to be used as hands. The word “hand” is sometimes used by evolutionary anatomists to refer to the appendage of digits on the forelimb such as when researching the homology between the three digits of the bird hand and the dinosaur hand. Areas of the human hand include: The palm (Volar), which is the central region of the anterior part of the hand, located superficially to the metacarpus. The skin in this area contains dermal papillae to increase friction, such as are also present on the
i. I’m looking at you and you’re saying an acorn squash will always be an acorn squash. I’m looking at you and the squash becomes a squash-shaped hole in the universe. How my wounded interpretations drag your image over every strawberry. How a strawberry can hold any constellation, any wounded image we’ve dragged it over. That strawberry-stained hole in the universe; that wound. Come-on socket, eye, and strawberry spine. Come-on sweetheart, tearing through the universe. Here are my hands. Here are three artichoke petals and a crawfish. Here are my hands; my tongue of sharp petal; my soft red brain. I am tying a string from your tooth to my finger. Your cheek red-glossed and cracking. Tooth and finger, knee and toe, I am trying to invert your bite. So everything you consume rises to meet you. So you speak the air into mountains.
ii. His hands large and lean were as delicate in their action as those of a temple 1 dancer and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords2 and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own3 and mothers do perish at the hands of our own righteousness4 an open hand slammed against the car window5 raised in animation while the lineaments of his face are 1 2 3 4 5 6
irradiated by the soul within6
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
how we wives his thin hand
these hands are not more like / but
where was this?7 and with one hand she clothed him herself and holding his hand she led him like a child8 henceforward I shall not look to the right hand or the left9 put out my hands to stop10 hands bluish with cold11
and he put out his hand to feel the warmness of breath on his palm12
7 William Shakespeare, Hamlet 8 Unknown, Gilgamesh 9 Sophocles, Oedipus Rex 10 Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird 11 James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 12 Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
and with the other
I could not
iii. your hands are full of marigolds & turmeric you can’t hold --
my mouth, whose tongue -you can’t hold -or see -- your hand
anything more -- & I won’t bite the hand that feeds me. or show my hand.
in front of your face. you carry fire in one hand and water in the other.
an iron hand in a velvet glove. an opal at the core of the moon. there are hands
you carry a handful of tongues and turmeric and marigolds.
& there are the words orbiting your hands. like doves or music notes like tongue is to teeth as hand is to mouth, whose mouth, whose hand is in
iv. & when he opened his hands there was nothing, & inside that nothing, two bright years, & inside those years, a mango ripening in the yellow light, in the light coming in through the kitchen window
morgan levine