Poem of the Week

Glove Money

Sophia Dahlin

I need money to buy gloves

so that I never need again to touch it,

money. I need gloves to separate my hands

from dollars. Also from other hands

when they hand me money, handling

others’ money, others’ hands,

disgusting. And cold, or hot, and lotion.

To regulate mine own hands’ temperatures,

gloves. To buy them, money.

What would be most ideal

would be to have the gloves already.

Somebody, I need you to hand

me some gloves, to hand me

some money there in the glovestore,

so I may hand that money in my glove

to the cashier there, whose name

is French for “casher” and she

will handle me the coins I’ll catch

in my leather palm. Or velvet palm,

or artificial breathable fibers

like Lance Armstrong, an athlete of my time.

I would like enough money for gloves,

enough gloves for money, and two hid hands

held by my secret skin.

Once before I knew I was a kind of

lesbian, when I just liked boys, when I was but

a board, I mean when I despised my own thin

smallboned chest, I saw on her,

we were in somebody’s driveway,

in full sun, a classmate wore

a hand, a little charm on a chain,

palm-down penny-length ornament

that rested past her clavicle,

above her breasts. It is the part I now

know I love to touch the best, just

where the fat starts. I stood though

dumbstruck, not knowing, not knowing yet

that I am a hand and my sex

is a hand. I thought how erotic,

how could it be so erotic, how secret

that her necklace touches her, she wears the touch

in public.

The Yale Review · “Glove Money” by Sophia Dahlin

How did this poem begin for you?

My friend Dan was describing the author Carmen Maria Machado’s beautiful gloves at the Lammy Awards. He expressed joy at her success, as he’d met her when she was starting out, and I told him I was glad she was making that “glove money.” Dan said, “‘Glove Money’ is your next poem.” I believe in taking every prompt. I looked up the phrase and discovered it refers to tip money for servants. Neither of these stories has anything to do with the content of the poem, alas, but they are its origins. When I wrote “Glove Money,” I noticed with pleasure that the first part and the second part are scarcely related. It’s the sort of poem that would drive a workshop insane.

Sophia Dahlin Sophia Dahlin is a poet based in Berkeley, California. With Jacob Kahn, she edits a small chapbook press called Eyelet. She is the author of the poetry collections Natch and Glove Money.