Lest my tongue be burnt
and all words I loved disowned
as children tossed out
from the mouth that cradled them
to wander foreign countries alone,
I caress from the creases of my fingers

my english,
this full length mirror
a street girl carries crooked
under her arm and breast--
a horizontal slant nuder than flesh
making meaning in flashes.

Where is it going, bumping along?
Jarred and crashing and beaming
like a throwing up or endlessly exacerbated jazz.

The singer who could charm the world
with a humble reed, must indeed
be in love with words,

yet always this english
why is it you hold out in your upturned hand
precisely what you are at once pulling away,
as if no where pleased you to linger
and so you congeal at the table with us
neither shining nor dissipating,
like a dark matter.

I sang for the certainty of mahogany
the solidity of brass:
where you would meld back into lake
be healed to the pond's surface,
permanently affixed to sky
given back to the unopposed silence
where they might remember us in times to come.