What the Right Hand Knows
from What the Right Hand Knows
I am not in stereo.
Deaf in one ear,
I am unable
with any accuracy
to pinpoint clamor
and quiet.
Argument reaches me
only on my left or
marching down
the center of the street
cleared
of other traffic.
I lose the background,
the sotto voce.
I lose scratch,
whisper, rain,
white noise, color
if it’s muted,
the good gossip
unless I turn to it.
Stories must
circle west
toward twilight.
I have no east.
I learned this
on an ordinary afternoon,
my parents fighting,
torching one another,
and the only place
to run for cover
was standing there,
covering my ears.
But my right hand slipped—
to nothing.
Nothing?
I rolled up the gates,
brought my fingers
flat again, lifted
one, then the other.
Both hands. Neither.
I don’t know why I didn’t
cry or
tell anyone
the sound wasn’t working.
Suddenly strange,
hearing and not—
I kept the sugar taste
of that secrecy
well-hidden
until eventually
Armstrong
landed on the moon
and our family’s first
color console
broadcast the Earth
reflected in the bubble
over the astronaut’s face—
itself another
television
attached to the body
of the best father
of all possible worlds.
Did you know,
I said to my mother,
that the moon’s dark side
has no sound?