Joseph Nicks

Unclenched Joseph Nicks

Unclenched: a passive fist's manifesto




The hominid hand. Its prehensile qualities (due largely to that remarkable opposable thumb) are legendary. It is perhaps the only anatomically advantageous structure this animal possesses. That oft-touted capacious cerebrum seems as often as not to allow itself to swell with a meaningless steam that marginalizes whatever intellectual potential it had in the first place. And with that pushed-in rostrum tucked up under the cranium and bent into an L-shaped labiolingual-laryngeal mess that imparts to this animal the power of speech, well that ability seems rarely to be put to good use.




No, it is the manus hominis that has allowed this species to be so constructive. Of course, as with those other two aforementioned structures, it can be just as adept at wielding weapons as it can tools. And when it is clenched into a fist, it is pretty much useless for anything other than fucking things up.




Though some of them may be infused with a certain degree of anger, none of the poems in this book, for example, could have been written had these fists not managed to come occasionally unclenched.