agnost 

I was slow to understand 
the phrase, “I speak for myself.”  
How to believe what I want to say.  
Half of my tongue a late bloomer. 
The tongue has eight muscles  
which move it, four for shape,  
four for direction. 

diatom 

Before I am five I have the sounds  
of two alphabets in my mouth  
but after I am five speaking is exertion. 
I choose English. My aunt pinching 
my cheek sits sullen in the back of my mouth. 
My grandmother’s loving questions lodge 
between my canine and molar, a throb. 

saltcells 

My mother utters lines she believes 
she needs to: words formed in her lungs 
at birth. Her life unfurls in sentences, 
dictation, as-told-to’s.  
What does she find in translation?  
Into English and Spanish and German  
Italian and Czech? So many tongues.  
Can she remember herself with just one? 

allium 

My sister’s mouth says more than I do, 
exhales vivid holler, calls us all 
to hear. I hear her and forget the taste 
of my own sorrow, imagine I’m healed, 
my suffering surpassed.  
It was always this way.  
I don’t remember how it happened.  
My sister’s mouth: my answers.  

lipid 

I might have reminded myself
to ask question after question,
talked over all the voices 
who seemed not to listen. 
If I had known this as a child 
I might have ached less for company.
I wanted to know things so I asked.
Not everyone felt this way. 
As cells slough off in the mouth
they leave traces behind  
to be sopped up or swallowed. 
I don’t change. I will always  
want to know.  

chalk 

This muscle tells my secrets, 
if they’re told, cupping truth 
to keep it close, prevent it  
from being swallowed. It knows,
though sometimes it doesn’t know
it knows, what the limits are to telling. 
I want to speak in a room where
someone might always be yelling.
How fast to let things out. Who to 
talk to, what danger lies underneath.  

brine 

The place that remembers things
the mind might not have learned.
Tart shame of thinking too hard
about myself. Metallic swig 
of betrayal. Like my girlhood
fears, it lives unnamed. 
Still it spills what it knows.  

slack 

I learn to taste the truth 
in secret. Give over to mute bliss.
What is silent dwells on the names
it gives each of its selves, 
lets them linger 
to get them right. 

From Sister Tongue (The Kent State University Press, 2022). Used by permission of the Publisher. All Rights Reserved.