Poem about “the hand”

It's got veins, it's dirty.
Knuckles like balls.
It can move, it has fingers and it has fingernails.
It has bones in it.
It has little lines and dots.
You can wear marriage rings on it.
The lines look like lightning.
Your hand can look like a spider.
The fingers can look like snakes crawling in the grass.
It can look like a pumpkin with a stem.
It can look like a starfish.
It can change different colors when you squeeze it.
It can look like sandbars when you squeeze the two together.
It can wear clothes and be Spuds McKenzie.
Blue veins like rivers with boats sailing down them.
Your hands can move with muscles.
You can make cookies with them.
You can tie strings around your fingers.
You can wash them.
You can grab cookies and things.
You can grab grass.
You can break things, like punching paper,
     styrofoam sticks, cups, cookies (in half).
You can clean fish.
You can break a pig, or a piggybank.
You can break a counter.
The hand has blood.
Purple veins like thunder.
Like rivers splitting up.
You can read.
You can rip things. Paper, cardboard, shirt material.
You can build houses, clocks, snowmen.
You can hold things—cups, snakes, toys, babies,
     the flag, pictures, calendars.
You can build doors, fences, windows, curtains.
You can chop trees.
You can feel things—paper, wood, a baby.
You can cut paper.
You can move clocks.
You can make puppy dogs.
You can pick up snow and throw it.
You can push heavy boxes.
You can comb your hair.
You can write.

          — First grad class, salmon, ID