Hands

The delight I take in watching my hands

age—endless. They are my grandmother’s

ridged veins, branches I thought long

gone to mill-dust. Slowly, dorsals

become paper, a crinkling of tissue

crepe marking birthdays. So, Doctor, tell me

again how Restylane will plump

them back to beauty. Make them youthful, dewy

again. Erase my years, the dogged 

ones of clawing in & digging up, out,

free. Doctor, explain once 

more how “hands don’t lie”—

you think I don’t know that? These hands

speak everything, flutter just truths. 

They say, These lines 

are wages earned, liver spots bonuses

clocked, tendons popped 

with wisdom. In these hands are carried

the entirety of me: my cells cupped

by my mother, her mother, the whole

trail-weary tribe from Oklahoma and Cherokee

rose roads back. Doctor, you want

to rewind these hands with yours? 

I handle my own unraveling,

shaking arthritic thumbs and all.

How to Kill a Lion

I was born a month late, hell bent

on breaking in as a Leo. I’ve always

done it on my own time. Stubborn

as a bulldog, my mom would say. 

Bullheaded, raged a littering of exes

I left twirling in the wake. But pride,

it makes us do stupid things, careless

things, dangerous tests of fate

that end in Should have died-s. Forget

being a Cancer, the nurturers,

the charitable ones, the summer children

scrabbling about in the sand. Show me

the fire, soak me in jealousy—give me

a burning love for the record books.

We’re lions, and they’ll all want us

for our hides, those wild manes, the weapons

that glisten like jewels in our maw.

Being wanted

is a glorious thing—it feeds our prides

and licks at our egos, makes us purr

like tired, trusting kittens

as they hound us down, hunt us,

kill us for sport.

Gluttony

The cherries, the birds

got them all, gobbled them up—

spit down the pits 

for the lawnmower to chew through.

I was five, and the blank fields

went on for acres. Each spring

the blossoms birthed, the fruits

got heavy and the birds

got fat, feasted 

like winged gods.

Jessica (Tyner) Mehta, PhD is a multi-award winning Aniyunwiya interdisciplinary poet and artist. As a native of the occupied land of what is often referred to today as “Oregon” and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, space, place, and de-colonization are the driving forces behind her work, which includes 15 books and several solo exhibitions. She recently completed a Fulbright Senior Scholar post in Bengaluru, India where she curated a poetry anthology in the colonizer’s tongue.