Christopher Jon Heuer

BALANCE IN GOD'S WILDERNESS

Dude said the stoned Hippie chick
as the rabid black bear gnawed
at her intestines
I would have shared
I'm a Child of the Earth
I don't want to interfere
with your cycles, or the trout cycles
or anyone's cycles
I just don't want to be a part of
the cycle, especially in your mouth
Those are my intestines
and my blood and I feel
this relationship, while possessing
true and soulful communication
your Being to my Being
is decidedly one-way

The rabid black back bear
said Uff and Snaff and Hess
the way that males will,
and smeared her blood off his snout
(once he felt she was no longer a threat,
thus freeing up a forepaw)
Grr-snarl-grrr...

Communication did continue
after a fashion, but both
were leading parallel lives,
insisted the Hippie chick until hers ended
Then the rabid black bear went away
and was shot by a hunter
poaching illegally
who later died of gut cancer
and everything was balanced once again

Christopher Jon Heuer's recent book Bug--Deaf Identity and Internal Revolution was published by Gallaudet University Press in 2007, and his book of poetry, All Your Parts Intact: Poems, was published by The Tactile Mind Press in 2005. Heuer's work has additionally appeared in Kaleidoscope Magazine, The Tactile Mind Quarterly and various anthologies including Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology by John Lee Clark and The Deaf Way II Anthology by Tonya M. Stremlau.