Blank was read on June 1 at the 2014 Bear River Writers Conference as a finished piece from a poetry workshop with Thomas Lynch.  

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/bearriver/aboutbearriver 

Blank

My father was a quarryman, hands at home

On a welded wheel, fingers stiff, waiting for sun

To clear the lip of the pit, an artist is his own way

Content to read the grain through an emery palm

Leaving the rest to rain and wind.  My mother on the other

Hand was a chiseler with a syncopated mallet

No stranger to the fluter and veiner, fine dust felting

Her coffee, laboring ankle deep in a drift of flake humming

As she set to removing everything that didn’t belong. 

One morning, seeing my chance, right hand freed

Only the night before, I hacked out feet and a face

Only a mother could love, raking footprints clean as I left.