Childrens beauty pageant

I need a spare of me;

the old one, sacrificed much.

As the girl down the road

who signs to her deaf brother

till her fingers chaff.

With

no understood gesture

for silence, she takes her

fingers and clamps her lips

until, occasionally,

the seasons change.

Brother,

grown now, recalling

the autonomy of quiet, knows

love as a show of arms thrust

around an absent waist.

Peanut butter on bread is a clicking sound;

grapes, a palace of wings with angels.

Pastor says the mission of the deaf is to

accept the sequential hypothesis

of consequence. (he will touch

you if you come nearest his pelvis)/

Says of the deaf that they have

been entrusted, whereby the god of

language visits them on summer nights.

Separates their liquids from the beauty

of different gravity's

"He is like the redwood, still and

full of oil" he tells his mother.

The pastor, in his worldly cult of blue,

lies.

Reviews

[Ken Simm.]

As with others I find this piece to be rewarding if puzzling. I get the impression that it recalls true times past and it certainly is a weighty piece. Note I say weighty but not ponderous. In fact it is the antithisis of ponderous. It has an inital fragility that echoes the nature of the child or the disability of deafness but it then; amazingly in my view; constructs itself into something of a horror story.
This is a masterful work of world class art. I can say nothing more accurate or explicitly true.

[writing mojo]

This is very disturbing, but so true..you captured the feeling of innocence being taken..some who say they are holy walkers or. Anointed. practice robbery in the night Santeria..and call divine inter connection to desire of being like a god..excellent piece

[Matching Socks]

Wow Dana...
Hit me like a tonne of bricks, unless I interpreted wrong.
Which is entirely possible.

[Delmar Cooper]

I like the pastor portrait. I like to watch from below as the anointed explain the inexplicable. From below you can better gauge the quality of the foot clay.

[LJW]

After I read this, I stared off into the silence.

I felt connected to you in this silence, your intent did not get between us.

[W.k.kortas]

I'm feeling more trepidation than the norm in putting my two cents in on this piece, possibly because there is no easy box in which to put the piece. The prior review wisely and justly notes the notion of unconditional love of the sister for the deaf brother; that is certainly there--but I am struck as deeply by the absurdity of her clamping her lips, as well as that of "no understood gesture/for silence", not to mention the pastor's statement of the mission of the deaf, which strikes me as a very strange thing for a pastor to say. What's more the title can be read as absurdity as well--if a beauty pageant is a silly thing, those for little children are even more so (but yet, infused with a mother's love, as it were, at least on some level.) This isn't some dystopian nightmare, though--there is the image of the sister of the deaf boy, grapes as " a palace with wings", the touching notion of the deaf being visited by "the god of language...on summer nights". There are lies and madness herein, and kindness and beauty as well. It's life its ownself, and all done in some thirty lines, and I guess you can't ask for more than that from a poem.

[ANTO]

"As the girl down the road
who signs to her deaf brother
till her fingers chaff. " - what a unique take on unconditional love Dana - exquisite words

"With
no understood gesture
for silence" - I went Whaaa? then it sank in and I went 'Wow" - very cool !

great piece