Song

Sex is weird, don’t you

think? I mean take my nose

in your handkerchief. I mean

who doesn’t want to rub up against

Beauty? Get a little of it on your

eyelids, in your nose, get inside its

dark, sweet, monogrammed folds

for a good sneeze? It’s a little

weird, a little gross, but I would

kiss you where you pee if you would

let me. Bless me, don’t you think it’s

Fate? I mean you and me in Beauty’s

corner? I mean me rooting for Beauty

in your lap? And don’t you think

Whoever thought this up was

Weird? I mean what was She

thinking? Love is life licking itself

prolific. I think it’s all just one big

Tongue. And I don’t think it means

anything. And I think about it all the

time. I mean all the time. Don’t you?

Flirting with the Deaf

I’ve been watching you watching the

interpreter. She is just to the left of the

speaker, and always slightly behind

so that you are always slightly behind

too, your face registering surprise

when the surprise has already been,

your smile on the heels of the other smiles,

your laugh coming after the wave of

laughter subsides. I love the lag time, the

pause between word and sign, the space

between signifier and signifier and

signifed. I want to slip inside that space and sit

across from you, legs crossed, hands

folded in my lap. If I made myself very

small, inconspicuous, insignificant as

another pair of antennae on the wall,

just watching you, quietly, watching the

interpreter, could I, could we, fit?

The Face of Listening

The active listening of Deaf people

in their signed conversations

with each other, if you’ve ever

seen them—beautiful, flitting,

leaping—communication as communion,

the almost-genuflecting heads

nodding their affirmations,

their agreements, their understandings,

the backchanneling, the feedback,

the empathic finger-flicked HOW-AWFUL,

the bobbing OH-I-SEE,

incredulous TRUE-BIZ?

in-the-face WOW! the approving

and allowing and concurring

RIGHT-RIGHT and YES-YES

and THAT-THAT-THAT—

all that grammar of the face, its tenses,

its anima, the thousand outpouring faces

of Deaf people listening to each other’s

gab, palaver, repartee, the found

poems, the stories, jokes and autobiographies

in a language with its own music—

rhythms, assonances, crescendos

and descrescendos, riffs and repetitions—

all the sections of the body’s orchestra—

hands, face, eyebrows, eye-gaze,

lips, tongue, head-tilt, shoulder-turn—

creating meaning simultaneously—voila—

a visual-gestural symphony for the eyes.

Old Basketball Hoop

This abandoned post

on the edge of the driveway,

holding up the backboard and the rim

for more than twenty years now

in the same rusted pose,

like a monument to my children’s

childhoods, which I pass beneath

every day on my way to work,

this memorial to H-O-R-S-E,

and Around the World,

and nothing-but-net,

a metal net that went KA-CHING,

a sound so rich and gratifying,

whenever we scored a basket,

and it still tinkles softly

when the wind blows through it,

though no one has taken a shot

in years. The whole contraption

with its frozen posture

reminds me a little of myself–

still holding out, still holding up

the circle of an empty embrace

for those same children

who are done being children,

who have moved away and won’t

be moving back. It’s a little sad

and a little ridiculous, frankly,

that a whole sandbox of sand

that once upon a time I poured

into that hollow base–

so the whole thing wouldn’t tip over–

is still sitting quietly inside

just waiting for those children

to come out and play.

Delve

I want to go deeper,

all the way down

to the cellar of the house

I grew up in. I go there

in my head, the same head

that easily cleared the low ceiling

above the dark, narrow staircase,

the lightswitch on the left,

the banister beginning halfway down

on the right, the aluminum nosing

of the treads groaning metallically

as I take the steps one at a time,

counting them as I go: one, two, three,

four, five, six, seven, eight–I think there were

ten altogether, though I could be overshooting it

or undershooting it. I can’t

remember exactly but I can imagine

(imagination is memory) the exact feel

of the newel-–small, rounded, wooden—

and the squeak-rub sound it makes

as I grasp it briefly like the hand

of a dance partner and twirl myself around it,

jumping off the last step with a flourish

and landing on the linoleum tiles

of the floor of the basement

of my childhood, the furnace room

(fire-breathing, verboten) to the left,

the laundry room (sweet-smelling, white)

to the right, and one central cylindrical

vertical pole silently supporting everything

above. I put my arms around it

lovingly. I clamp my legs around it

tightly. And I embrace it like a fire pole,

replacing my tight grip with a looser grip

to allow myself to descend.

Revision

There used to be

a live chicken in this poem.

There was a mountain

and a sailboat.

The Pacific Ocean

sloshing between stanzas.

And me like Adam

saying Here am I

to God who was also

near.