- Quarto for My Father
"(now the ears of my ears awake and)"
—e e cummings
at first I thoughtshe was flipping me offbehind the wheel big blackSUV versus little white mein my Hyundai but her handswere just moving as she spokethe kind of gestures most of usrecognize not like my fatherand his hands which move to shapewords in the language of the DeafI don't think about silenceeach second stretching outvoid like the hollow of anempty shell noise leakinglike a feeble living thing(not nearly fast enough)fleeing the absenceunable to bear some soundsthe silence its own living thinga language of its own
there is in Minneapolisthe merged Deaf-Hearing churchwhere the Hearing are welcomedbut silent is the speechjust hands moving and facesflexing only vocalizationslike the old singer's jokeput the em-PHA-sis on the proper syl-LAB-lethe sound and words not matching upwhere you have to relearnwhat emphasis means what soundlooks like feels like reallywhat language is I used to know it betterthere is in Minneapolisthe Quietest Room in the Worldwhere you go in and sit downfifteen discomfiting minutesin total darkness throatsgulping involuntary gut-noisesthe music of the innardsno words no soundjust bodies in the darkentering the world againthat brutal cacophony what noiseis meant to be we forgetthe sound silence makes [End Page 52]
Gretchen Rockwell is a poet and supplemental instructor of English at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, Rhode Island. Her work has appeared in Glass: Poets Resist, Meat for Tea, Into the Void, and other journals.