Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology

And No Applause

Alice Jane McVan 100 And No Applause They live balanced on a tight rope of fear, aloof from the warmth and safety down here; like acrobats, dreading a move timed wrong, an interval held a second too long, alert, aware that everywhere security fades in shifting air, transient, frail— tomorrow? now?— response may falter, judgment fail; they taste the fear before the fact, before the turn, the innocent act that lurches to the sudden slip, the just-missed grip; tense, they hear with quiet face the white man’s sneer, Alice Jane McVan 101 and bow with grace to white men’s laws. Only this: there are no spangled tights, no rolls of drums, no colored lights, no net, and no applause. ...