my hands remember

being asked to hold the bones

i try recalling conjuring

correctly 

the old hum-buzz  tones of 

folklore anecdotes

she once told me: how to be invisible

how to be invisible. how to

be invisible.

i cup my crammed palms, holding bones

listening for the cooing 

promising

like a familiar sister in my young [left] ear

telling me how to be invisible

how to get away

how to boil a black cat and

put each bone in my mouth

all at once (or one by one) 

so my hands can

disappear

before

me-

Tanya L. Young is a Washington-based writer and artist. She is currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at Western Washington University. Her work has been featured in such publications as New York Quarterly, Salt Hill Journal, and Stonecoast Review. Tanya is also the Poetry Editor for Bellingham Review and a staff reader for Maine Review.

Greeshma Chenni Veettil (b. 1988, Kerala, India) (from the series SPRING ALLERGIES, digital inkjet print) is a visual artist based in Syracuse, NY. Her work combines photography, alternative processes, text and installation in an attempt to re-contextualize the everyday details of our lived environment. She is interested in creating immersive visual experiences by transforming flat photographic prints into three-dimensional photo-sculptures. In their new spatial configurations, her images seek to draw out new responses towards recognizable mundane objects. Greeshma is currently a graduate candidate in the Art Photography department, at Syracuse University.

This poem was originally published in Salt Hill 48.