You keep your hands in them to get warm. You slip your hands into them when you don't know what else to do— a pose that supposedly conveys an air of nonchalance. A casual vibe. Like, I'm chill. Or Don't mind me, I'm just leaning against the wall here, trying to blend into the atmosphere. You've learned to stay just like this, especially when you're unsure of how to mix and mingle, make small talk; after a while, even the waiters walking around the room with little trays of hors d'oeuvres forget about you. In 1991, two German tourists came upon a mummified corpse frozen halfway to its chest in a pocket of ice, somewhere on the border between Austria and Italy. An archaeologist determined that this guy, christened Ötzi the Iceman, lived around the year 3,300 BCE. When he was found, he was still wearing a cloak of woven grass, shoes and leggings of animal skin. His belt had a pouch dangling from it— an outside pocket containing a flake of flint, an awl made of bone, some kind of scraper and drill, dried fungus. The contents of his stomach included partly digested food from at least two meals before he was killed: ibex meat, wheat, deer and chamois meat, herbs, roots, fruit. Inside the gastric pocket, he'd also harbored whipworms. And you could go on and on, exploring the body as if it were a bottomless hamper, an envelope of assorted curiosities. You feel around coat pockets and find lint balls, crumpled receipts, an old piece of gum; quarters, one half of a pair of lost earrings. In the early 1900s, there was something called a beer pocket inside a men's jacket or vest, expressly for carrying a bottle of alcohol. Women used to be able to carry a square of cloth, yarn or thread, keys and scissors in ample pouch pockets. But now, if women's clothes have pockets, they're so much smaller than men's. You'd think someone decided they'd better not be hiding any secrets, better not be given extra space of any kind.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.