Deaf Republic

At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?

You can fuck anyone—but with whom can you sit in water?

And when they bombed other people's houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisble house by invisble house -- I tooka a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth month of a disastrous reignin the house of money in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war.

The deaf don't believe in silence. Silence is the invention of the hearing.

Lord, such fire from a match you never lit.

Question What is a child? A quiet between two bombardments.

What is silence? Something of the sky in us.

I do not hear gunshots, but watch birds splash over the backyards of the suburbs. How bright is the sky as the avenue spins on its axis. How bright is the sky (forgive me) how bright.

The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like a paperclip. The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like the body of a boy.

Today I have to screw on the expression of a person thought I am at most an animal and the animal I am spirals

You are alive, I whisper to myself, therefore something in you listens.

She scrubs me until I spit soapy water. Pig, she smiles. A man should smell better than his country— such is the silence of a woman who speaks against silence, knowing silence moves us to speak. She throws my shoes and glasses in the air, I am of deaf people and I have no country but a bathtub and an infant and a marriage bed! Soaping together is sacred to us. Washing each other’s shoulders. You can fuck anyone—but with whom can you sit in water?

Be courageous, we say, but no one is courageous, as a sound we do not hear lifts the birds off the water.

You step out of the shower and the entire nation calms— a drop of lemon-egg shampoo, you smell like bees, a brief kiss, I don’t know anything about you—except the spray of freckles on your shoulders! which makes me feel so thrillingly alone. I stand on earth in my pajamas, penis sticking out— for years in your direction.

Watch, God— deaf have something to tell that not even they can hear.

Now each of us is a witness stand

I am your boy drowning in this country, who doesn’t know the word for drowning and yells I am diving for the last time!

Deafness is suspended above blue tin roofs and copper eaves; deafness feeds on birches, light posts, hospital roofs, bells; deafness rests in our men's chests.

Observe this moment -how it convulses- The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like a paperclip. The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like the body of a boy.

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house. I took a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth month of a disastrous reign in the house of money in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war.

SOLDIERS—arrive in Vasenka to “protect our freedom,” speaking a language no one understands.

like a dumb pigeon's beak, I am pecking every which way at astonishment.

There were too many bodies and not enough people— too many ears and no one attached to them.

I am not deaf I simply told the world to shut off its crazy music for a while.

and what remains of her is a puppet that speaks with its fingers, what remains of a puppet is this woman, what remains of her (they took you, Sonya)—the voice we cannot hear—is the clearest voice.

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war.

A man should smell better than his country

Deafness isn't an illness! It's a sexual position!