Dances with Words

Dances with Words

“But there are books, books there are! Rattling words on the page calling my eyes to dance with them.”

—Adah Price, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

/ˈevrēˌTHiNG/

In everything the situation at hand currently there is nothing but

shouts. Nothing but spittle thorns shooting

between two mouths of a marriage sawed

into halves

of a rotten mango.

Its green skin still smooth to the outsider. Nothing

but the pronoun and the antonym of

the word everything

holds

my words together in a journal clutched

between two chubby six-year-old hands. Peppered with mocha freckles that blacken over each year but always hunger

for that soft kiss of words pirouetting

on a chilled cheek.

/iz/

A position in space is is. This verb laces itself between my toes on a groomed grass beard. Past the golf clubhouse.

I is a trespasser. A trespasser is I.

Down just-so contoured hills I tumble and dump my body in dusty bunkers.

A powdered angel carves herself into soil.

She leaves trace.

Traces of smiling words in shamrock blades,

a secret message from the angel who flies away with the Florida hurricane wind.

Sprinkling her words throughout the world

she is.

/ˈôsəm/

In the sense of synonyms awesome

holds hands with sublime.

The noun is a gaping mouth, a huge cheerio ring that extends

into a black hole. In the bowl

each cheerio tastes like nouns

of fear, admiration, apprehension. Multiple bands

enter the stomach, confused, unable to digest, acidify.

Because awesome is like that it does not break easily into its own letters you can’t wrest the A from the W.

But sometimes these awful cheerios don’t burst

with so many flavors.

The ring wraps warm around you

when you pillow into whispy

down of your dog’s belly

right before flicking out

the light.