My friend won’t go sleeveless
because of her Czech arms.
She means her meaty upper arms,
arms like Ruben’s beauties,
artful arms that remind me of fictional
southern belles, mamas and grand-mamas
with flesh like bread dough,
moist and heavy.
I admire my friend’s solid arms
and her line of women who worked them
over a washboard.
Used them to wield a hoe and whip oxen;
assemble artillery casings and drape
over a flannel shoulder while
doing the two-step or polka.
Arms like mine from eastern Poland,
where they dug beets and potatoes.
Made the sign of the cross
and lit Sabbath candles, both.
A generation and two later
they wrung chicken necks,
planted gladiolus bulbs
and a daughter in the ground.
Learned to turn a steering wheel,
hurl a bowling ball
and carry a suitcase
away from a marriage.
Arms, in this life, that taught on a
blackboard and rocked some babies,
reached up at family weddings
to dance the YMCA, washed a father
on his deathbed now jiggle and flap
when I wave goodbye.
Today I’ll put on a sleeveless shirt,
grab my trowel and a bag of mixed bulbs.
Today I’ll plant gladioli. Row after row.
Kathy Jacobs is a retired nursing professor who recently left the fellowship of gifted and generous Nebraska poets and is at play finding others in the Twin Cities. Her poems have been published in Plainsongs, The Comstock Review, and several anthologies from The Nebraska Writers Guild, including How It Looks from Here: Poetry from the Plains.
Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s National Poetry Month project: Sing the Body: A Collection of Poems Praising Our Selves!
With support from Florida International University’s Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab (WPHL) and Florida International University’s Center for Women and Gender Studies, we are publishing poems that celebrate body positivity and our selves.
In addition to publishing the poems as poems of the day, 10 select Sing the Body poems will be displayed on FIU’s main campus near mirrors and places where women encounter themselves. These poems will live in a dedicated portfolio on our website.
Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting SWWIM Every Day! Happy National Poetry Month!
