Christopher Jon Heuer

TREE HUGGER

He was a Zen disciple of passion.
Prior to the meditative ritual
that landed him in prison, he never
would have thought that being One with a tree
was illegal in every state except
California (and only there since
Legislature needed Republican
votes to get "for-cancer-patients-only
medical marijuana" passed, and
some compromise was called for). Nudity

was simply acknowledgement; the absence
of "his"(or him, I...). Sticky sap, contours
of rough, fabulous bark, navigating
strategic knotholes, issues that arose
with chaffing—were simultaneously
Tree/Not Tree, Him/Not Him as they both/not
both bent and swayed under the effort of
interlocking limbs. "Ohm," he chanted. "Ohm,
ohm, ohm!" There was a certain release to
it, accompanied by rhythmic, kneading

massages, flesh parting, roots pulsating,
spraying nutrients everywhere. "God!" he
screamed as Being hit crescendo. "God, God!"
The experience blinded him to the
approach of sirens, at least until his
grip, exhausted now, failed. He fell onto
the hood of a cruiser fifty weightless
feet below, fracturing not only the
branch he held but also four ribs and his
lumbar vertebrae. Yellow tape was used

to seal the area, and DNA
evidence extracted (some of it so
fused, the test tube murk was milk-brown, contents
quite inseparable). He smiled at this
privately while the white paramedics
stabilized his neck, pumped up the gurney,
and drove him off. The wide leaves he gathered
to his crotch kept the sheets out of the wounds.
"Ohm," he whispered, rotating his scraped wrists
under the straps to touch their stems. "Ohm, ohm."

* * *

ENHANCEMENT

One day a woman I barely knew said
You should get an implant then,
if you're so worried about communicating
with your son! I wanted to say You should get
breast enhancements, then, if you're so worried
about being alone! Had she slapped my face,
I would have called her a Man-Hater—

I was only trying to help her, was she getting
counseling for her defect? Ten years
from now when other women, (barely able
to cross their arms and cleavage
bulging everywhere) strap her on a table
to shove them in, keeping stats and monitoring
the knockout gas, she will understand.

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.