From the archive
The Sound of Silence
there’s a such thing
as being so sad you can’t
even listen to music
as the notion of a note
shattering the shape of nothing
beating up against an eardrum
becomes unbearable this is
not an assault on otolaryngology
i just think it’s really dumb to ask
if a tree falls in a forest &
no one is around to hear it
does it make a sound
cause the answer is always
no, sound is the observable thing
to know a sound is to hear it
further to recognize it as having
interrupted the nothing even if
unidentifiable, which is why
one can say they’ve been silenced
having spent a lifetime screaming
into the void—why your mother
says your father be talking a lot
& never saying much of anything
why all a Black man in his car at a
traffic stop gotta do is go above a
whisper & all of a sudden he is yelling
at the officer & when told
to be quiet he
shoots a look that says make me
officer unholsters steel & says gladly
it is then you find that silence
is not a state
the absence of sound
but an act
the suppression of sound
