Placemant in David Dominguez's "Fingers"

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 I decided to write on one of the poets that we will not be focusing on in class this Tuesday. I’m intrigued by the multidimensional way David Dominguez employs space and placement in “Fingers.” Time leaps through images and objects that the speaker associates with his own experience. There is a double narrative and a double seeing in “Fingers.” The way the images and narratives are placed disrupt a sequential narrative and creates a layered effect that adds weight and depth to the poem that is structured around short declarative sentences.

The poem shifts, or moves, through the present, past, and future through associations of images and objects.  The poem suspends linier time until everything appears to be occurring.  Time exists, but it is fluid and denies exact placement. Images and objects make their own time in relationship to other images and objects. For example, the speaker begins by retelling his own experience:

            Because of the frozen meat and a silver ring,

            my index finger swelled and dimmed.

           

            The men held down my wrist and used a saw.

            I fought back the need to squirm and watched

            where the nicked up teeth missed

and the scars began to form. (1-6)

The scar acts as a critical image. Its placement activates  multiple layers of time.  For instance, scars are formed after skin is healed— not in the moment the skin is split open. By referring to the wound as a scar forming the speaker is alluding to the future where the skin has already healed.  Consequently,  as soon as the speaker mentions the scar and activates the idea of present, past and future the poem shifts:

           

I remember the Julio longed to go home.

           

            nothing passed the time like work

           

            unconscious work when the bones pounded

            and the mussels stretched. (7-10)

As the “scar” moves us forward in the poem it also moves us further backward. We move into the speaker’s memory. Instead of continuing the narrative around his own wound the speaker introduces Julio. The poem leaps backward to another event connected by the images of scars and saws.

So when the stuffer jammed, Julio jumped on a stool,

            lowered half his body into the machine,

            and when his thigh brushed against the go button,

            The blade moved an inch

 and sliced off his index finger. (10-15)

The speaker ends the poem wondering what would have happened if he were Julio  “Would I have screamed, could I have taken the pain, (23)” but we are left without an answer. We never see the speaker’s physical scar or what happened when the men held down his wrist.  Instead of the physical placement of his scar or pain we are shown the speaker’s relationship to another man’s experience. There are scars that are more than physical in “Fingers.” There is meaning in what we don’t see.

Dominguez, David. ed. Francisco Aragon. The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry.

Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007. Print.