Other Voices Magazine

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Winner April 2008

“What would you be doing or thinking if there was no gaze or hand to stop you?”
-taken from the Foreword in Toni Morrison’s Sula

Converted
by Renee van der Putten

The hand that took
gave the charm
of the little hand of Fatima
from the pulpit
of the Shams of the Humanities
to me, the pupil.

Your eyes were burning
and your hand holding
all I was.

And the day came when
a detective and a hidden camera
unveiled what you named
the evil eye of my own family.

I was so young,
my eyes too wide
to narrow in on clues.
You, an old hand
holding the privilege
of the right hand,
did not have to cover up
your eyes in the night,
like the adulterer in the bible.

But for me, my faith had left me.
In the tomb of my darkness
the eye that looks was shut.

You, my fiery love,
dropped your hand
like a tired bird’s wing
handing me over to the hand of fate
that threw me overboard
into the whale.

That was, when the times
of no eye to watch over me
and no hand to guide me,
had falled upon me.

Blinded by gried,
I rocked back and forth
between my sister Fatima
back to Mother Mary
and when spat out upon the shore
an invisible hand
helped me to stand up
and I could see into the future.

Renee van der Putten was born in Holland and grew up in France before moving to Canada. She graduated from McGuill University in 1974 with a Major in French literature and proceeded to work in theatre as well as for an airline. She is a visual artist with national exhibitions. He poetry has appeared in chapbooks. She is putting together a book on haiku, written both in French and English, and that includes her own illustrations. www.reneevanderputten.com

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