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The Tongue Is
- Wesleyan University Press
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The Tongue Is xeroxed on brainmatter. Grid-squares of words spread like dirty oil over a lake. The tongue even lies to itself, gathering wildfire for songs of gibe. Malcontented clamor, swish of reeds. Slow, erratic, memory's loose grain goes deep as water in the savage green of oleander. The tongue skips a beat, link of truth ... a chain running off a blue bicycle. It starts like the slow knocking in a radiator's rusty belly. I enter my guilty plea dryas the tongue of a beggar's unlaced shoe. The tongue labors, a victrola in the mad mouth-hole of 3A.M. sorrow. 37 from Dedications & Other Darkhorses ...