Clerc Scar 32 5-9 April 2010 All-Poetry Issue ===== Monday I Have Carried My Banner of Survival Ala [Poem] ===== Longers Melanie Bond [Poem] ===== Who Invited You In? Karen Christie [Poem] ===== Tuesday Slow Timothy Cook [Poem] ===== Sparks Christopher Jon Heuer [Poem] ===== English Teacher Paul Hostovsky [Poem] ===== Wednesday Washoe Miriam Lerner [Poem] ===== AKITA Doug Milligan [Poem] ===== I Fill This Small Space Lawrence Newman [Poem] ===== Thursday The Girl Who Heard The ASPEN Nan Rosen [Poem] ===== I Thought of You Rosemary Sandford [Poem] ===== What Is It? Scott Stoffel [Poem] ===== Friday The Stolen Essence Terrylene [ASL Poem] ===== Granny and The Exploding Underwear Mary J. Thornley [Poem] ===== From My Heart Carole Virning [ASL Poem] ===== We welcome letters to the editor in response to this piece. Send to editor@clercscar.com. We reserve the right to edit letters for space and clarity or not to publish a letter. We are always open to submissions. Submit your writing, artwork, or video to editor@clercscar.com. To subscribe, email subscribe@clercscar.com with the message "Subscribe daily" or "Subscribe weekly." To unsubscribe, email subscribe@clercscar.com with the message "Unsubscribe me." Find us on Twitter and Facebook! Visit our archives or bookstore at http://www.clercscar.com. Copyright 2009 by Clerc Scar. All rights reserved. ==================================================================================== ===== I Have Carried My Banner of Survival Ala Lines: 75 [Poem] I have carried my banner of survival Across rugged terrains; I have trudged Through mazes of Witches and wizards Giants and gargoyles Monsters and maenads I have carried my banner of survival Through the soft light hotness and Through the hard cold darkness Knee-deep in a rushing river wind beating Against my face Freezing beads of water on my cheeks (maybe they were tears) I have carried my banner of survival Across tumulus oceans where I hunkered down, Shivering in leaky cabins, stomach rolling with Each rocking motion of this old ship And then I laid my banner of survival gently on snowy ground One Thanksgiving when we sat under a blue tarp Haphazardly tied to a chain link fence I passed the day with a friend and a pseudo-ally And I felt the grace of serenity Only to pick up that heavy banner of survival and continue my trek Across badlands, the dry, dusty, empty space Tip-toeing the way only the deaf can Across sand mounds where hid Hyenas, lizards, snakes, scorpions I have carried my banner of survival upon tense shoulders One hand against my ulcer-blistered abdomen Through cutting trees Came upon a stony mountain, rough and wild Peaks disappearing into thick fast-moving mists It was here I laid my banner, once again, to splash onto muddy land Unable to carry on any longer I sank to the ground Stretched out, eyes wide open unseeing I began to ponder my flag I have long lived a victim hidden inside of the skin Of a warrior and now I wonder, should I Peel off my mask my fury And join my people in the tomb Of dead (deaf) souls Wrap myself in gauze, for there is no other way To tend to the countless burning wounds Should I claim my space In the graveyard of the discarded mainstream Bodies piled crisscrossed one upon one two hundreds Suffocating stench infiltrating communities Were I to donate my body to science Would an autopsy reveal The trauma of neglect The disease of rejection The broken bones of confused identity What are we victims of? There's no name for us The broken the forgotten the failed experiments We've been squeezed through the assembly line In your factory of soundness Doctors audiologists pathologists teachers interpreters We've been poked prodded penetrated Sliced branded and tagged We have no country no home Our flaws visible to the watchers We are the unwanted the outcasts the unacceptable Untouchables It's easier here, half sunk in the mud It is calm and it is still, like a composed surrender Body numb, brain slowly shutting down It is lonely and it is predictable There is no tombstone, no wall of honor Not even two pieces of wood hastily nailed together Jammed into in the earth, a fleeting reminder And when I wind down to die I know my story will fade with me A gene removed from two fragile strands tied together Like a spiral ladder to nowhere Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== Longers Melanie Bond [Poem] Into this world I came all alone Out of this world I'll go on my own Living in this world my seeds I have sown Fruits my life produces will be known. The luckiest ones are the loners Those who hear a different drumbeat Those who follow their own paths Those who answer to no man. In this world I will remain unknown I will be as the wind that has blown I will be like a star that was thrown No one knows where my spirit has flown. The luckiest ones are the loners Those who hear freedom's beat Those who find the highest paths Those who are free to love all men. ===== Melanie Bond is a deaf-blind writer based in Bay City, Michigan. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== Who Invited You In? Karen Christie Lines: 29 [Poem] Who invited YOU in, anyway? Flinging open the door with your boxes and boxes Of audiojunk Dragging in wires, CD furniture, Music speakers that sit in the corners Like black tunnels deep within opened mouths. Bringing in your obvious unfaithfulness In your love of pacing and pacing In that intimate dance you do with your cell phone And eyes wander around the room Seeking something other than mine. Who invited YOU in, anyway? Did I subscribe to some pathetic Reverse affirmative action Relationship? Some misguided attraction To the unexotic other? Who invited you in, and why Why when you don't know when You have no idea how to close the distance between us In the dark Your calloused paws can't find my hands Your numb fingertips are worthless For the necessary tender Circling and circling That open my fists Allow my palms To truly invite You in. ===== Karen Christie teaches in the Department of Creative and Cultural Studies at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== Slow Timothy cook Lines: 6 [Poem] i am slowly fast i think slow but i weed out all the crap which sometimes gets me way ahead ===== Timothy Cook is a deaf-blind writer based in Watertown, Massachusetts. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== Sparks Christopher Jon Heuer Lines: 11 [Poem] What we'll do is melt Alice in the middle, just enough to bend her double, then drop Tom's shoulder so his "A" holds her neck down, face in lap, free hand clang, clang, clanging her bottom 'til sparks fly. ===== Christopher Jon Heuer is the author of BUG: DEAF IDENTITY AND INTERNAL REVOLUTION and a professor at Gallaudet University. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== English Teacher Paul Hostovsky Lines: 35 [Poem] He had the most beautiful fingerspelling. So elegant, eloquent, clean. He had only to spell his name and all the deaf girls turned into titters and sighs. Surrounding him in the hallway, they?d escort him to class-- a bobby-socked amoeba oohing and aahing, blushing and shifting shape around the nucleus of his right hand. A somewhat feminine yet not unmasculine hand, it was a reader?s hand that lived among words because it loved words, and probably learned to love words from other hands that loved words before it, that wrote them down or just spelled them out in the air lovingly. And though none of the deaf girls loved words quite the way he did, they loved his way, and they loved his hands, and they loved. And so years later when the girls were grown and the hand was still-- though some of the girls had found love and some had not, though some had learned to love words and some had not-- they all got together again to remember how they all loved once, so long ago now that it was hard to recall his face anymore, or even his words exactly. But his vowels, his consonants-- Who could forget those long intelligent fingers lighting the little fires that caught in their chests and throats, and blazed up into their breathing until they could find no words themselves, could give him only their eyes, their eyes reflecting his words dancing away like smoke through the singing air. ===== Paul Hostovsky is an ASL interpreter and the author of two collections of poems, BENDING THE NOTES and DEAR TRUTH, both available at http://www.clercscar.com Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== Washoe Miriam Lerner Lines: 35 [Poem] Sometime in the spring of 1974 my mother and I sat on the couch watching TV "The First Signs of Washoe" Washoe, a baby chimp, taught to sign, surrounded by love and a rich communication environment full of Deaf and Hearing signers But with no one of her own species with whom she could commiserate TIME EAT! TIME EAT! Washoe signed SHOES RED, DIRTY DIRTY, OPEN DOOR, OPEN SUITCASE A few signs, 130 approximately, mighty attempts in a brain the linguists were assured could never fathom the complexities of grammar and syntax Washoe sees a duck--calls it WATER BIRD Washoe sees a doll in a cup--calls it BABY IN MY DRINK My mother and I watching Washoe when I was 16 our combined vocabulary of 400,000 words we could utter and only silence between us But together smiling in awe at what this meant, this little monkey, producing language This little monkey, eloquent within the limits of her 3?year-old chimpanzee mind. My mother and I paralyzed and mute with our supposedly limitless linguistic and intellectual capabilities. Washoe died the other day at age 42, taking her hands, her ideas, and her joy. My mother chose to die a long time ago at age 60, taking her voice, her silence, and her sorrow. I miss them both. We watched Washoe together, my mother and I. WATER BIRD, signed Washoe (I am your sunshine girl) BABY IN MY DRINK, signed Washoe (your daughter on the couch next to you) Mommy sat and stared. ===== Miriam Lerner is an ASL interpreter. She also directed HEART OF THE HYDROGEN JUKEBOX, a film about ASL poetry. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== AKITA Doug Milligan Lines: 20 [Poem] A perfect name for a guide dog meaning 'one who walks in silence,? trained not to bark but to listen. You were my first guide and friend. When I came out one morning in your eighth year you wouldn?t move. I tripped over you. I couldn?t get you to walk so I grabbed your harness ?Want to go find Sissy?? We made it down 3 steps before you collapsed and I carried you the rest but 3 steps from the bottom I knew you died. I blubbered. Your death showed me I should have had more loves in my life. You took the whole load. ===== Doug Milligan is a deaf-blind poet from Contario, Canada. His collection of poems is DARK-SILENCE. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== I Fill this Small Space Lawrence Newman Lines: 9 [Poem] I fill this small space, this time Who is to say yours is better Than mine or mine yours Intensity changes within the minute, The hour or the day And we are but a speck but a gleam Whose brightness flickers-- Yours or mine--it does not matter The end of the road is the same. ===== Lawrence Newman is a former president of the National Association of the Deaf and the author of SANDS OF TIME and I FILL THIS SMALL SPACE. This poem is reprinted with the kind permission of the author. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== The Girl Who Heard The ASPEN Nan Rosen Lines: 45 [Poem] The trees are silent now and still but for the whisper of the wind. Once I was deaf, but still my mind played back the music I had lost. Imaginary voices spoke from patterns formed by lips and face-- a smile called forth laughter from remembered stores of joy. There was no true sound, only sight, where hands and signs made words and moving things made mental sounds-- a synergy of eye and mind to break the silence of my world. A bird made sound in flight, not song, but a shrill glissando of wing and shadow streak across a wall to mark its fall to branch then silence when its motion stopped. The lightning bolt a hiss and pop and rain a whisper in my mind-- the river's flow an oboe tone-- a mental note, and all my own. I heard the aspen sing, not as a shifting of the wind but as a flute played from within-- staccato notes as every tiny leaf danced laughing in the sun. Until science helped and medicine stepped in to gave me back the gift of hearing sound and voice-- made real the music of my heart. Sounds fill the shattered silence of my life. Lightening is silent, but thunder rolls. I hear raindrops splat and dash-- a river's crash and laughter over rocks. Birds' flight is silent now I hear them singing from the trees. And I can sit for hours and talk to folk who never took the time to learn the speech of hand and sign. And yet . . . some days I walk the sunlit-dappled trail where mica glints with dancing shadow leaves and miss the aspen flute for now the trees stand mute. ===== Nan Rosen is a deaf-blind writer from Colorado. She is also the co-author, with Carolyn Mineah, of a science-fiction novel, VOYAGE TO CENTAURI. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== I Thought of You Rosemary Sandford Lines: 39 [Poem] I thought of you gazing From your twelfth floor rooms At Puget Sound and Mount Rainier, And how we watched Notre Dame From cheap Left Bank hotels. We walked hand in hand as lights flickered Like coloured candles on the Seine, Seeing the Louvre, Mazarin's dome And all the steep-roofed ancient houses Black against the luminous sky. We ate cold chicken with tangerines, Crisp, soft baguettes, drank sparkling Wine and then made love. All that was long ago, yet still I miss you As an amputated limb. There is An emptiness, so I am pleased We meet sometimes in dreams. We came apart quite slowly, Cell by living cell, until the space Became immense, ocean and continent Lying in between. But my hands Remember you; your flesh, The pattern of your body's hair, The warm softness of your beard And how I'd plait and roll it up, Making it look neat. Now your photos Show it loose, very long and white. When we last embraced in LA's Departure lounge, I thought you felt Quite frail, delicate as leaf-lace, You who'd been so powerful, so strong. We are unwound by time. Those tiny Minutes grind the gears of youth. There is no magic key for turning back The years, nor should there be. You watch the boats on Puget Sound, Our grandchildren at play, While I turn words and words around. ===== Rosemary Sandford is a deaf-blind writer from England who is the editor of OPEN HAND, the chair of the board of directors of Deafblind UK, and a doctoral candidate in poetry. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== What Is It? Scott Stoffel Lines: 41 [Poem] What is it? What is it? That thing with three legs, lurching and tottering along? What grave spat it up, as if Death rejected it, too? The living watch it suspiciously, never letting the children out of their sight. Greetings mumbled or shouted glean no reply from the approaching abomination. Its eyes see little but dart like the eyes of evil, full of malice and mischief, no doubt. Guard yourself, draw back, lest you be poisoned! A bold soul might step forward, dare he even touch the thing! Egad! That gained its notice! A single eye ablaze swings about to bear like a Howitzer upon him. Stay 'way from it! Stay 'way! Perhaps his greeting was kind enough, but the thing's face speaks of war, the one eye bidding him withdraw to the ranks of the glorious living, while the other uselessly withers the daffodils to his right. No word comes from it, the usual explanation having been exhausted long ago. Neither can cross the line between the living and the dead. In silent fury, it staggers on, hideous in gait, but large enough to evoke caution. What is it? What is it? What a horrid thing, belched from the guts of Hell. ===== Scott Stoffel is a deaf and illegally blind thing and he may or may not be it. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== The Stolen Essence Terrylene [Poem] View the video at http://www.clercscar.com/?p=818 A subtitled version is also available at http://su.pr/1XkhVz ===== Terrylene's website is at http://www.terrylene.com Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== Granny and The Exploding Underwear Mary J. Thornley Lines: 12 [Poem] Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the airplane ride of Farouk Umar, Who swaggered onboard with loaded pants And who should be there but my sainted aunt And with her who but my deaf Granny Who grumbled loudly, ?They stopped me, And patted me down, but they let this clown Aboard without so much as a squeeze When we were going to Vegas on Christmas Eve! It's what wrong with this country! They'd stop deaf grandmothers before they'd grab The exploding underwear of an Abdulmutallab!" ===== Mary J. Thornley is a Deaf writer and a graduate student at Georgetown University. Back to Top ==================================================================================== ===== From My Heart Carole Virnig [ASL Poem] View the video at http://www.clercscar.com/?p=822 ===== Carole Virnig is an ASL instructor at St. Paul College. ===== We welcome letters to the editor in response to this piece. Send to editor@clercscar.com. We reserve the right to edit letters for space and clarity or not to publish a letter. We are always open to submissions. Submit your writing, artwork, or video to editor@clercscar.com. To subscribe, email subscribe@clercscar.com with the message "Subscribe daily" or "Subscribe weekly." To unsubscribe, email subscribe@clercscar.com with the message "Unsubscribe me." Find us on Twitter and Facebook! Visit our archives or bookstore at http://www.clercscar.com. Copyright 2009 by Clerc Scar. All rights reserved. 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