Sex is weird, don’t you

think? I mean take my nose

in your handkerchief. I mean

who doesn’t want to rub up against

Beauty? Get a little of it on your

eyelids, in your nose, get inside its

dark, sweet, monogrammed folds

for a good sneeze? It’s a little

weird, a little gross, but I would

kiss you where you pee if you would

let me. Bless me, don’t you think it’s

Fate? I mean you and me in Beauty’s

corner? I mean me rooting for Beauty

in your lap? And don’t you think

Whoever thought this up was

Weird? I mean what was She

thinking? Love is life licking itself

prolific. I think it’s all just one big

Tongue. And I don’t think it means

anything. And I think about it all the

time. I mean all the time. Don’t you?

I’ve been watching you watching the

interpreter. She is just to the left of the

speaker, and always slightly behind

so that you are always slightly behind

too, your face registering surprise

when the surprise has already been,

your smile on the heels of the other smiles,

your laugh coming after the wave of

laughter subsides. I love the lag time, the

pause between word and sign, the space

between signifier and signifier and

signifed. I want to slip inside that space and sit

across from you, legs crossed, hands

folded in my lap. If I made myself very

small, inconspicuous, insignificant as

another pair of antennae on the wall,

just watching you, quietly, watching the

interpreter, could I, could we, fit?

The active listening of Deaf people

in their signed conversations

with each other, if you’ve ever

seen them—beautiful, flitting,

leaping—communication as communion,

the almost-genuflecting heads

nodding their affirmations,

their agreements, their understandings,

the backchanneling, the feedback,

the empathic finger-flicked HOW-AWFUL,

the bobbing OH-I-SEE,

incredulous TRUE-BIZ?

in-the-face WOW! the approving

and allowing and concurring

RIGHT-RIGHT and YES-YES

and THAT-THAT-THAT—

all that grammar of the face, its tenses,

its anima, the thousand outpouring faces

of Deaf people listening to each other’s

gab, palaver, repartee, the found

poems, the stories, jokes and autobiographies

in a language with its own music—

rhythms, assonances, crescendos

and descrescendos, riffs and repetitions—

all the sections of the body’s orchestra—

hands, face, eyebrows, eye-gaze,

lips, tongue, head-tilt, shoulder-turn—

creating meaning simultaneously—voila—

a visual-gestural symphony for the eyes.