Puerto Rican?  Oriental?  Hawaiian? woman, gray hair up top,
hideous unhuman red bottomhalf well how can she be expected
to stay on top of what she's under?  body packed thickly into wheelchair,
magoo glasses, signing shrivelled woman in lesser wheelchair,
wicked witchy white wiry ancient tress like stale angelhair going

every direction tiny little bald spots her skull an old constellation
and who signs to a tall bonethin man presumably toothless husband
cheeks warped in ominous valleys and who is constantly smiling
jolly like a skeleton is jolly, laughing silently, holding a brittle ribcage,
and I'm thinking they're all deaf including the huge -boobed blonde

on the sofa hair pulled tightly back into a bun earrings glinting
in the flourescent lights the kind people say of,
 “oh but she has such a beaufiful face,” and she does seriously,
 I want to be her  and she keeps laughing except I can't really hear her,
 it's an inward chucklingin all a strange crew I can't figure out,

a cell phone rings and it turns out the oriental hawaiian?
puerto rican woman can talk after all,  and does but in a murmur
for just a minute,  then whispers a few words to the blonde
who is again amused, signs again to the shrivelled one who then
signs to  jovial skeleton man   -- all those fingers fluttering

it's dizzying, somehow beautiful, this dance of digits -- 
there are others in the room too and we stare in separate glooms
mute, mute except for the effervesent receptionist rallying
into utmost  professional empathy informing one by one
their appointments are messed up because everything 

is going paperless bear with us, honey this honey that, meanwhile
a bearded man is quizzically trying to figure out my motley clothes,
absurd 56 year old ponytail stray hairs escaping like illegal
immigrants scuffed boots boots and neon scarf and I know I know
what he's thinking which is the opposite of clothes and I'm

undressing his eyes with mine, as I never undress below the eyes,
and meanwhile keep downing water cup after cup after cup, and
we're all there for the same thing, which is to enter a transparent
booth as if some scifi set prepared to deliver our lines like beam me up
down or sideways, but no, it's just to breathe in out in out, huge hard

suck BLOW, to see if there's any air in our lungs and if not why not?
the waiting room is virtually dumb all of us keeping our voices
to ourselves inwardly signing or beating up or crossing ourselves
or whatever, hoarding our air like treasure which of course it is
though we've taken it for granted with our habits and sins and maybe

there is a lesson here, not not that one  -- the language of fingers,
no exclamations  question marks interjections oh no that can't be
right but still the quiet as in the beginning, of the world I mean,
the very beginning before there was the word, such lovely
serenity, maybe speaking maybe noise is not the way to go

and in the room we are all disparate all silently laughing and
crying all vitually holding our ribs, all terrified of course but
keeping our burdens to ourselves like skin to skeleton, fur to fox,
coffin to corpse, all hoarding our pronouncements like maybe
the glorious glissade of hands could save the globe from the globe.

Julie K. Shavin 2 2010