Chereme

A chereme is the smallest unit, akin to a phoneme in language, of a sign in sign language. Think of this gesture, or quasi-gesture or micro-gesture...

The midflip of the infamous bird.
The murdering hand of Abraham stopped in mid-strike.
The aborted flagging of a bus driver when it is too late.
The intent to point at something that is now being explained.
The smile mothballed before it could be seen by someone who is not the person you thought s/he was.
A dead man's hand in the half-formed shape of a sign orphaned by its "speaker".
Urine that smells of gold in the rising above all pedestriana.


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Kane X. Faucher is an assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of 10 books and has placed over 1100 poems, articles, short fiction, and reviews internationally. He currently lives and works in London, Canada. He is a recent recipient of the &Now Award for Best Innovative Writing, and has recently released a collaborative poetry post-code experiment entitled [+!] with Matina Stamatakis and John Moore Williams. His next novel, The Vicious Circulation of Dr Catastrope, is coming out in 2010 with Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink. He is also a co-editor of the academic journal Autopsia, and associate editor of the journals The Poster and the Semiotic Review of Books.

1 comment:

Ritornello101 said...

I like the "smile mothballed" and the word "pedestriana". Good poem.

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