None of us have The Touch,
Though we have felt The Touch
*
We are all (all of us
Wearing leopard-print dusters Just once,
I was thirty hands tall (like one whole horse
Standing on the back of another whole horse
Washing the windshield of my father’s eighteen-wheeler
Until I fell from the soapy hood Now, I drive all night
I too am unimpressed (but want badly to be easily awed
Again
*
Is The Touch a strand of loose hair
That someone brushed away, but the wind
Placed onto my face
*
My pick-up is the color of a hail stone I’ll drive
You anywhere
*
Somewhere, someone is testing the germ
Of soybean seeds in a wet towel In a warm kitchen
Somewhere, someone is standing in a field of soybeans,
Breaking off the pods to rub the velvet on their neck Down
The ridge of their nose The Touch can be grown
Some cucumbers in our garden have thorns like rose bushes
They sting so
Copyright © 2026 by Canese Jarboe. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 27, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
