Deafness
By David Galef

                
                 JI ear. mimi ear; edge, border; loop; selvage; bread crusts.

—kanji entry 3697 in The Modern Reader’s Japanese-English Character Dictionary, second revised edition, by Andrew H. Nelson

Lend me your ear, he says,
and the assemblage donates
the edge of a coastline,
its sand shifting in the tides.

Lend me your ear, he repeats,
and the crowd steps back
from the border of its town,
leaving the main gate open.

No, give me your ears, he insists,
so that the whole group
widens to form a giant
loop about the speaker.

I want only your ears, he maintains,
but the populace will not hear.
They toss him the selvage from a rug
and ten-day-old bread crusts.

David Galef is a professor of English at Montclair State University and a co-founder of the M.F.A. program in creative writing at the University of Mississippi. He's published fourteen books, including the novels Flesh and Turning Japanese, and the poetry collections Flaws and Lists. "Deafness" is part of a book-length series of kanji poems.

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