USING MY LEFT HAND INSTEAD OF MY RIGHT
Amaurotic
No longer at home with blindness
Who’d a thunk it? Edgar Bergen, ventriloquist, speaking for Mortimer Snerd
I am at home with my right hand.
Soul mates, we.
She’s a handy pal to have on hand — able to write right words instant infinities before
amaurotic I even consider renouncing Grammar’s neurotic insistence on speaking for me,
on thunk’s illegitimacy.
Home as I am at the keyboard, I’ve become a one-handed pianist confronted with conquering the Rach 3 – a concerto so difficult its dedicatee never dared tackle it.
Some say it drove David Helfgott beyond the breaking point
until, healing, he re-mustered his courage to become one, to flow with The Monster. As will I, claiming ruefully the right to pen this poem with my left hand -
my ventriloquist’s dummy emboldened, Self-animated, actualized,
thunking for her Self
in major and minor chords through each finger’s black or white manicured throat.
Ivory incarnated from plastic.
©Jenine Bsharah Baines 2022
When Dr Mehmet Yildiz challenged those of us in the right-handed world to join ranks with lefties — to enhance the power of our (aging) brains, I was entranced, illuminated, inspired. Sign me up!
Thanks, too, to Carolyn Hastings and Monoreena Acharjee Majumdar for challenging me as well. Challenging rather than prompting because 1. I’ve missed the deadline 2. The poem doesn’t truly answer the prompt 3. I needed the freedom to break the prompt’s rules and speak alongside the Muse.
Thank you, team at Paper Poetry — Carolyn, Indubala Kachhawa, and Suntonu Bhadra — for your flexibility. As for you, dearest readers, let’s work on a different kind of flexibility — ambidexterity!
To learn more about David Helfgott, here is a powerful, powerful, powerful scene from Shine — a movie inspired by DH’s encounters with “The Monster.” Even if all you listen to is the opening dialog, you’ll grasp what a beast this concerto is.
As is aging.
please click here if inclined to ponder, play, dream with me.
Thank you.
