The Gift of Tongues
- The Gift of Tongues
They said I was born with it. When I was little and the music swayed, I would shake and roll. From my mouth words frolicked like lambs. Different languages, they told me. Sometimes it seemed like nonsense. The walls of floral print dresses rose up around me. The preacher had sideburns and thick wide glasses. I thought he was God and his eyes were bad. That was why he let things happen.
Later, they would call my gift seizures. They took away my songs and left me pills. Still I sway each Sunday under the pull of light, under the heat of the raised roof, the wooden crosses. I wave my palms in an unseen wind as music vibrates green and holy, the voices around me spilling prophecies in God's own language.
Jeannine Hall Gailey's first book of poetry, Becoming the Villainess, was published by Steel Toe Books. Her poems have appeared on Verse Daily (http://www.versedaily.com/) and in journals such as the Iowa Review, Columbia Poetry Review, and Beloit Poetry Journal. Her chapbook, "Female Comic Book Superheroes," is available from Pudding House Press and her Web site, www.webbish6.com.
