Dan Campion

The Handful
 
Suppose I give you something in your hand,
which you hold out while keeping your eyes closed.
You try your best to keep your face composed
while weighing heft and texture. You expand
the possibilities, your fingers fanned
out, now, to test the size and shape. You’ve nosed
and tasted, thereby left yourself exposed
to bad effects let’s hope you could withstand.
You laugh, then look perplexed, then smile and ask
if you may open up your eyes. Of course.
But you’re as baffled as you were before.
You’ll raise your eyes up, taking me to task.
I’m just the means, I’ll tell you, not the source,
and gently, then, inquire if you want more.

Dan Campion’s poetry books are Calypso (Syncline Press), A Playbill for Sunset (Ice Cube Press), and The Mirror Test (MadHat Press). He is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and a coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). Dan’s poems have appeared previously in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal and in Able Muse, THINK, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and other journals. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.