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.