It’s not always the brain talking 
To your fingers, he says, 
Sometimes it’s all on automatic, 
Sometimes it’s like they have fallen 
In love for themselves, like they 
Have left all sense of themselves 
As belonging to you behind, 
And they are head over heels 
Or whatever the finger equivalent 
Might be: ambidextrous on overdrive, 
Double-jointed with reveries, all the body’s sensory 
Nerve endings having migrated 
Into their tips, their pads, 
And the brain on the receiving end 
Of what it never exactly asked for 
But can’t begin to turn away from. 

But it isn’t just the fingers, 
She counters, it’s every part 
Of your body serviced by that 
Interstate highway of a spine, 
All the two-way traffic and entryways 
And exits every microscopic inch 
Of the way from tailbone to topknot, 
Full of semi-loads of signals, 
Piled so high in the trailers some 
Are falling off at odd intersections, 
And with the Ferraris zipping in and around, 
And the light-show traffic signs—it’s all 
A kaleidoscope, a carousel, a live concert, 
With the brain sometimes having its fingers 
On the mixing board, humming along with the diva, 
Sometimes the background chorus, 
Or the brass section, madly amping up 
The rhythm, knowing, all the while, 
It can’t even read the music. 

Roy J. Beckemeyer’s

latest poetry collection is Mouth Brimming Over (Blue Cedar Press, 2019). Stage Whispers (Meadowlark Books, 2018) won the 2019 Nelson Poetry Book Award. Amanuensis Angel (Spartan Press, 2018) comprises ekphrastic poems inspired by modern artists’ depictions of angels. His first book, Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City Press, 2014), was a 2015 Kansas Notable Book. He recently co-edited (with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg) Kansas Time+Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Little Balkans Press, 2017). His poetry has been nominated for Pushcart (2015 and 2020) and Best of the Net (2018) awards, and was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019.

Beckemeyer serves on the editorial boards of Konza Journal and River City Poetry. A retired engineer and scientific journal editor, he is also a nature photographer who, in his spare time, researches the mechanics of insect flight and the Paleozoic insect fauna of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Alabama. He lives in Wichita, Kansas, where he and his wife recently celebrated their 60th anniversary.

Please visit author’s website for more information about his books, as well as links to interviews and readings (scroll down his About page for the link-list).

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Megarhyssa, ekphrastic poem by Beckemeyer in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 14, August 2022), nominated by MacQ for the Pushcart Prize

⚡ The Color of Blessings in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 5, October 2020), nominated by MacQ for the Pushcart

⚡ Featured Artist in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019); showcasing Beckemeyer’s poetry, prose poetry, and insect photography

⚡ Words for Snow, a prose poem in KYSO Flash (Issue 9, Spring 2018), which was selected for reprinting in The Best Small Fictions 2019