Memory: Touch

by Jack Bedell

 Nataliya Melnychuk

“Only Parts of Us Will Ever Touch the Parts of Others”—Marilyn Monroe

I think of my children’s hair, wet with fever, the small of my wife’s back after a bath, my father’s forehead

when he’s fallen and cut himself, my mother’s shoulders whenever my head was too heavy

to hold up on my own, my brother’s hands work-hard and tan,

the forearms of strangers sharing peace at Mass, the chests of friends

pressed against my own after a long absence, Santa’s lap,

and others I cannot touch but feel nonetheless, or would touch

given the chance, like the midsection of any tall man wearing a long coat

walking toward me on the sidewalk, just for fear he might be three kids, one on top the other.

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Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. His latest collections are Elliptic (Yellow Flag Press, 2016), Revenant (Blue Horse Press, 2016), and No Brother, This Storm (Mercer University Press, fall 2018). He is currently serving as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017–2019.