Frank Gallimore has written an elegy for Miss Calico, who, like Blanche DuBois, was not a young woman and had to depend on the kindness of strangers. And as we know, not all Johns are kind.

I imagine she became a prostitute because she could find no other form of employment. I wonder what form of communication she learned at the nearby School for the Deaf. If she learned American Sign Language, she could communicate with other deaf people but only with those hearing people who knew ASL. If the school favored oralism, she might have learned how to read lip movements and how to speak by putting her fingers on the mouth and throat of a speaking person and then imitating those movements. But not all deaf people trained that way are able to speak well, and they are unable to communicate with deaf people who use sign language.

It’s hard to know which form of communication Miss Calico primarily uses, but twice in the poem, she puts her fingers on the throat of the narrator to “hear” him say a word. Does she want to learn how to speak because she wasn’t trained to do so, because she wants to communicate with her Johns? (At one point, the narrator mentions her “inscrutable lingo,” which may be a literal description as well as a metaphoric one.) Did she get a poor education at the school, learning neither ASL nor oralism? We don’t know, but her desire to learn, her need to understand or find her identity, make her worthy of an elegy.

She appears to have had a strong personality. On her day off, instead of indulging in drugs as the other girls might do, she searches the nearby Dumpsters, perhaps to earn enough money to leave her pimp. Rather than wear the kind of sateen dress a typical prostitute might wear, she chooses to wear a hand-me-down calico dress.

But she remains something who deserves our sympathy. It seems the narrator is one of the few people this lonely woman is able to communicate with. It’s not clear whether she even knows what her name is, and the title of the poem calls her only “Miss Calico.”

But the strongest part of the poem is the last third. Whenever she asks the narrator “How do you say my name?” and he answers “Whore,” they both laugh. Is her laugh merely a brave front? The narrator indicates his own feelings by mentioning an ASL sign. Brushing the backs of one’s fingers against the side of the cheek is indeed the ASL sign for “whore.” It is, according to the source I used, similar to repeating the sign for “shame.” Such shame, the narrator suggests in the last line, is something that won’t go away, like a disfiguring scar.

This poem is a fine tribute to a deaf woman. She may have been caught between the hearing and the deaf worlds, she may have been forced into prostitution because of that, but she never let her shame keep her from struggling to communicate and yearning to discover other people’s worlds.

The only part I don’t like is Gallimore’s seeming postmodern reference –

When they fished her out, the eastbound roared
through necklaces of skyline, or so I remember,
or so I say.

Is this Gallimore’s reminder to readers that this story of Miss Calico may not be entirely true, that it is, after all, a composed poem? My only response is that we poetry readers already know that a poem is a made thing and don’t need to be reminded of that. (And please please don’t tell me that the whole poem is a PAP, in which Miss Calico’s fingers on the narrator’s throat are symbolic of the Difficulty of Poetic Communication.)

I feel as if I'm missing something in this poem, and maybe someone can help me. I guess the key is that it would be the john, not the prostitute, who typically would be asking How much, no? So why is that what she wants to learn how to pronounce? For that matter, why does she want to learn how to pronounce her name, when surely that would be the one word she would be most likely already to know how to pronounce. If she can say How do you say my name? she must be able to say her own name as well. Or is she saying those words in sign language? If the narrator also deaf? She she want him to ask her How much? I feel there's some clue to the poem here. I am wondering if the narrator is rather frightening.

If she can say How do you say my name? she must be able to say her own name as well. Or is she saying those words in sign language? Is the narrator also deaf?

I had some of the same questions, Robert. One shouldn't have to know Gallimore's bio (he was the only one in his family who wasn't hearing-impaired -- see my other toppost for a link to an interview with him) to understand the poem.

And although a poem shouldn't be expository, I think we readers should have been able to figure out whether Miss Calico used sign language or not.

She wants him to ask her How much? I feel there's some clue to the poem here.

Asking how to pronounce Baby and How Much,
she felt my throat for the trick of it....

Certainly the word "trick" has a connotation associated with prostitution, but as you suggest -- where is he going with that connotation?

I find the syntax off-putting here and it's justifcation by history (the authors unusual upbringing) even more so. I find myself asking why he can't just be more plain spoken or rather what purpose does his syntax serve? What, for example is the "eastbound roared" a highway? a train? a plane? and what is meant by "device of handshake for the best?"

Also, in the last stanza is there the suggestion that the narrator slept with Miss Calico, where she comes to him at dusk and by morning smells like a "wrung-rag?

The whole poem is disturbing and off-putting. With its intimations of handicap and prositution, Dumpster-diving and who-know-what else, at times I didn't know what to think.

Perhaps it's a blessing in disguise that the poet was not more plain-spoken, and we can use some of the language as metaphor, rather than in-person reporting? I don't wish to wrap my mind (and inner vision) around some of what was presented.