HOME SIGNSamuel Clare Knights
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Through letters and hands, this story navigates sounds and silences between the hearing and the deaf. Having been born to deaf parents, and acting as their interpreter for many years, I empathize with the struggle to find adequate symbol, sign, voice, and meaning. Our home signs, which are “made up” signs within the family, were gestures that filled the gaps of our daily experiences and imaginations.
AN EXCERPT FROM EP 87 “To never have the voice of your mother in your head, just motions pinned against air. She signs to me through the window. I can see letters moving. The hands outside the glass and the hands reflected inside. The trace of a J, its clear line edging fog to shape itself.” ABOUT THE AUTHOR SAMUEL CLARE KNIGHTS holds a PhD from the University of Denver and an MFA from The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. His first excerpt from The Manual Alphabet, published by Fence magazine, won the 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. |