from Deaf Republic: 14

Each man has a quiet that revolves around him as he beats his head against the earth. But I am laughing hard and furious. I pour a glass of pepper vodka and toast the gray wall. I say we were never silent. We read each other’s lips and said one word four times. And laughed four times in loving repetition. We read each other’s lips to uncover the poverty of laughter. Touch the asphalt with fingers to hear the cool earth of Vasenka Deposit ears into the raindrops on a fisherman’s tobacco hair. And whoever listens to me: being there, and not being, lost and found and lost again: Thank you for the feather on my tongue, thank you for our argument that ends, thank you for my deafness, Lord, such fire from a match you never lit.