First Prize: DYSTONIA     by David Keplinger     --after Leon Fleischer The hand did not wake up. Forty years I spent thinking of the right, the right. The left hand got bored. I am a pianist, I told the right hand. I am Fleischer. The clamp of the hand persisted. Brahms in A minor persisted. It waited. I am thinking of how Brahms would sink from my brain into the ball of my right shoulder, how I felt it moving from the triceps to a place above the elbow, about right here, then crippled itself. Not crippled. It was more like a fish, like a fish in a burst of freezing water, more stunned, not crippled, not dead. And I went fishing for that fish, to coax it from the ice, to lead it from my elbow to the hand. There is something I want to tell about the piano: "You must hear before you play," my old teacher once said. I want to tell you what I heard. I listened to the Brahms for forty years. I heard it founder in the ice. I heard a living thing I wanted only to save. I was the Brahms. I was cascading down. I was swimming in the waters. I felt a tingling in this hand. I felt it open up and close, becoming warm again. I was breathing in the warmth. I was making little breaths.