Ilya Kaminsky

My people you were something fucking fine
On the morning of the first arrests

Yes, we read each other’s lips and said one word four times
and laughed four times in a loving repetition

and now our boys go outside and are given back in the morning
like a small change—

Yes, the language of a country:
hands that take you out of your mother

I am yelling and my neighbors think I am laughing
Helicopters eyeball us like we are pig’s feet in a jar

And whoever listens to me
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.


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The recording from 2013 is based on an earlier version of what became Alfonso Stands Answerable later published in 'Deaf Republic', 2019


Alfonso Stands Answerable

My people, you were really something fucking fine
on the morning of first arrests:

our men, once frightened, bound to their beds, now stand up like human masts—
deafness passes through us like a police whistle.

Here then I
testify:

each of us
comes home, shouts at a wall, at a stove, at a refrigerator, at himself. Forgive me, I

was not honest with you,
life—

to you I stand answerable.
I run etcetera with my legs and my hands etcetera I run down Vasenka Street etcetera—

Whoever listens:
thank you for the feather on my tongue,

thank you for our argument that ends, thank you for deafness,
Lord, such fire

from a match you never lit.