Ed Madden
Chironomia (2017)
with lines adapted from Albert Bacon’s A Manual of Gesture (1872)
Designative gestures use index finger
or open hand—I refer to the friends at my right.
Descriptive gestures indicate space—
Darkness covered the entire land—here
the outward sweep of prone hands describes
the act of covering, also the extent
of the darkness. Significant gestures are really
attitudes—a hand on the head can signify
distress. Use assertive gestures for emphasis—
the laws must be obeyed. Figurative gestures
are gestures of analogy, as when moral
conditions are analogous to the physical.
Take, for example, the darkness—darkness
covered the entire land. Substitute spiritual
for literal darkness, and the gesture
is purely fictive, but no less descriptive
than before. We understand the gesture
before we understand the word.
Consider the president’s hands.
Bloomberg counted seventy-three
gestures in one speech and named them—
quotation mark, pneumatic drill, bunny.
Consider the way he pinches thumb and index
finger together, almost an A-OK,
though we know it’s not. An expert says
the way he shapes and pinches looks precise,
as if to say he nailed it. He points and slices.
A fist clenched to your breast signifies
regret. Also, a general tendency to spread
the hands too wide should be avoided.
Both hands facing out, front and vertical,
indicate fear or repulsion. What
the prone hand puts down, the vertical
drives away. Over dinner, we listen
to the news, watch him lift each order
for display. We watch for A-OK.
That gesture, almost Buddhist mudra, almost
benediction, almost signifies
agreement, but doesn’t. He beats the air
for emphasis. It’s Little Bunny Fufu.
In some European countries, the sign
means fuck you, means you are nothing.
He beats the air with it.
Ed Madden is a professor of English and director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Ark (Sibling Rivalry, 2016). His work has been published in Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, and other journals, as well as in Best New Poets 2007 and the recent anthology If You Can Hear This: Poems in Protest of an American Inauguration. He is also the poet laureate of the City of Columbia, South Carolina.
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