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4.2
Finger Exercises
Tuscaloosa, April
Michael Martone

South

Not the hand of God so much as one index finger pointing, touching there and, then, there no longer there. I always believed the digitalized clouds staggered, wove, wave after wave of wind. The cloud circled as it circled. But this, this was a fist. From space, the infrared scored true, a bearing undeflected, the deep crease in the palm, read, ruled.


West

Disaster skins paper. Unbounds it. Its wake is a wake of paper. Waste balled up. Drifting into drifts, sheets shifting in the leftover wind. Left like leaves in the stripped bare branches of trees. Files. Receipts. Photographs. Prescriptions. Directions. Notes. Greeting cards. Menus. Letters. Lists. Lists. Pages sloughed from books and Bibles found miles away, smoothed by a hand, dog-eared, thumbed through, blotted, hung out to dry, amateur restoration in order to turn in, to turn back, to return.


North

On 15th Street, there was a neon sign, a pharmacy’s mortar and pestle, flashing. The light strobing created the illusion of someone’s invisible hand stirring. The storm settled here on this spot. And ground. Ground. Ground. Ground. Ground.


East

My finger on the remote button pressed rewind over and over and rewound the wind. The wound undone. Took the wind out of the wind. Outside, the mockingbird stuttered on the sagging cable.

Michael Martone was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Keltch Pharmacy was on the way home from each public school he attended—Price Elementary, Franklin Junior High, and North Side High. The store had an old-fashioned soda fountain. He ordered flavored Cokes mixed right there—cherry, chocolate, vanilla. Next to the comic books, were racks of candy. Martone liked candy that also combined the flavors he favored in his Coke—the vanilla Wayne Bun Bar, the Twin Bing, and Valomilk cups. Later, he taught at many schools—Iowa State, Harvard, Syracuse. In Cambridge, he lived on Central Square near the Necco candy factory. Each day, he could tell what Necco Wafer flavor was being minted—mint, chocolate, clove, licorice, lemon. His most recent book, Four for a Quarter, reminded him of another Necco candy, Sky Bar, a chocolate bar divided into four sections, each section a different flavored center—caramel, vanilla, peanut, fudge.