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from Deaf Republic: 10

By Ilya Kaminsky b. 1977 Ilya Kaminsky

I kissed a woman

whose freckles

aroused our neighbors.

Her trembling lips

meant come to bed.

Her hair falling down in the middle

of the conversation

meant come to bed.

I walked in my hospital of thoughts.

Yes, I carried her off to bed

on the chair of my

hairy arms. But parted lips

meant kiss my parted lips,

I read those lips

without understanding

soft lips meant

kiss my soft lips.

Such is a silence

of a woman who

speaks against silence, knowing

silence is what

moves us to speak.

NOTES: These poems are from the unfinished manuscript Deaf Republic. This story of a pregnant woman and her husband living during an epidemic of deafness and civil unrest was found beneath the floorboards in a house in Eastern Europe. Several versions of the manuscript exist.—IK

Source: Poetry (May 2009).

Biography

Poet Ilya Kaminsky was born in the former Soviet Union city of Odessa. He lost most of his hearing at the age of four after a doctor misdiagnosed mumps as a cold, and his family was granted political asylum by the United States in 1993, settling in Rochester, New York. After his father’s death in 1994, Kaminsky began to write poems in English. He explained in an interview with the Adirondack Review, “I chose English because no . . .

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