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Otters

Raymond Luczak performs his ASL poem “Otters,” with voiceover and subtitles in English and ASL Gloss.

^{In English and ASL gloss}

[English]

in a documentary
they dove in
into the burble
of river, braiding
around each other
their combed fur
shining in the sun
their eyes twinkling
watching them
I wished my hearing siblings
had been more like them
always pulling me in
to cavort with them

[ASL gloss]

me watch-watch d-o-c-u-m-e-n-t-a-r-y
{creature-wriggle creature-wriggle}
water {cascade-left-right-down}
{creature-dive-down creature-rise-up
around-each-other
fur-lining-arms-chest} wet
sun {on-me}
chest-shine-shine
eyes-shine-shine
me-wish hearing brother-sister
same-same
{creature-dive-down creature-rise-up}
come-on-come-on
join play-play

Raymond Luczak is the author of several poetry collections, including How to Kill Poetry (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013). He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Themes

About this Poem

“American Sign Language (ASL) gloss is simply using English words and ASL idioms in the ASL sign order. Just to be clear: there is no standardized ASL gloss system at all. I ended up using ASL gloss for readings because it’s very difficult to look at my work in English and then sign it in ASL at readings, so I often create my own translations in ASL gloss and rehearse them to help me maintain eye contact with my audience while performing my work in ‘proper’ ASL. But it would be a good many years before I began exploring ASL gloss poetry as a possible genre of its own. This particular poem, ‘Otters,’ comes from a book-length sequence focusing on animals native to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. (Unbound Edition Press will publish Animals Out-There W-i-l-d: A Bestiary in English and ASL Gloss in the spring of 2024.) I grew up deaf (and long forbidden to sign until I was fourteen years old) in a hearing family of nine children in the U.P., so my feelings about the region are intricately colored by how I was treated as a second-class citizen within my own family; ‘Otters’ hints at this situation. The woods across the street from my mother’s house enabled me to cope with the hearing world in ways that ultimately saved me.”
—Raymond Luczak

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Instructions to Hearing Persons Desiring a Deaf Man

His eyebrows cast shadows everywhere.
You are a difficult language to speak.

His long beard is thick with distrust.
You are another curiosity seeker.

His hands are not cheap trinkets.
Entire lives have been wasted on you.

His face is an inscrutable promise.
You are nothing but paper and ink.

His body is more than a secret language.
Tourists are rarely fluent in it.

His eyes will flicker with a bright fire
when you purge your passport of sound.

Let your hands be your new passport,
for he will then stamp it with approval.

A deaf man is always a foreign country.
He remains forever a

Raymond Luczak

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Otters

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