I'll Tell You about Speaking in Tongues, and: A Shaker Speaks to the Invisible, and: Octoroon, and: Her

I'll Tell You about Speaking in Tongues

I faked it. Spoke some gibberish. Hated the preacher, who was my grandmother, how she made me stay down on my knees, say thank you, Jesus until I was delirious, clap my hands to the beat. Having more than one tongue scared me, for that was how I saw it—not the Holy Ghost speaking through me but moving me like an animal to slay me, putting an invisible tongue inside me. Mine felt too big already—an enormous egg in my mouth: always saying things I got hit for, things my mother said she oughta cut my tongue out for. So, at church I turned some words inside out, made them negative, reverse. My father knew it, told it like he saw it: your mouth is the Lord's, girl! I could see Jesus' hand holding that frightened blackbird that was my tongue, but I knew He didn't need it. Mary washed His feet with her hair and spoke not a single word. When I kiss you, sometimes you hold my tongue between your teeth as if you are the one who really needs it. Soft as a psalm yours is and mine, just that old bird now bright with flecks of fire. You are the only one I've ever let have it.

A Shaker Speaks to the Invisible

My box and broom are not finer than my faith; my prayers unmade are better than the slender seams of my clock. I know wood's moan and ring all day. I dream myself as a tambourine in hand. My friend, there is no morning lacking a tonic loveliness; no night without its apocalypse. Monotony's drumbeat I play out with what I've got: pith, thistle, and knife. What I build has the beauty of sparrows pecking frozen ground. It is my salvation, my cross, my song. I once loved the daughters; longed to lick my salty deeds. These chairs I make are my repentance. The spirit in them is revelation, the coming harvest, my need. The evening silence is the only god I know. Like dust occupying sun, He settles. Let the daughters sing. Their voices sand my heart down to a seed.

Octoroon

Called also an octoroon. As a girl, thought that was some bird. Purple-feathered lyrebird with a parrot-hard beak. I became the bird in the backyard, behind mother's gladioli where tiny frogs scattered over mud. Wings spouted from shoulders like a backwards beard. Some bearded iris. Toes hardened, curved into claws. Could I fly? Was I for show like a dumb grouse? Took years to uncover. Meantime, I molted. Colored myself in. As an octoroon, by nature nested far from home but longed for it always hence my terrible song. Getting older, adapt to the air and become like other birds, but odd. The tips of my feathers incendiary. When I finally fly toward home, I'll set that old city on fire.

Her

She came in one night, hours after you'd left. An owl in my room, stones in my chest. I thought the heavy houseplant was her flowering head but was just a wing. She had swallowed you whole as an owl does, then spat your bones at my feet. Coiled and precious, strange funereal thing.