Voice Over

Father of articulation:

He spent his Sundays cooped up in the downstairs wood paneled office.

The carpet was dark green and smelled like business.

My father the law man; the sole occupant of his corner.

He jammed his perfect words into a tape recorder,

A careful adult language of tired phrases

sounding like clear water and rich coffee.

He would say “period” out loud at the end of sentences

And go back only to correct himself,

A wild scribbling noise signifying each tape-over.

He would rarely have to correct his flawless American English, though.

Mother of sound:

Her lungs are heard throughout the house.

She never shied away from the most ridiculous decibels.

On the phone, her failing ears

led her to click “speaker”-

and she pressed it hard to her ear.

And the ladies on the other line

And my mother’s jubilant cackle

Mingle in the vents, shaking my siblings out of their beds.

Her Staten Island style stumbles over language,

and isn’t afraid to, isn’t ashamed to:

It’s just the way she tawks.

Son of whispers:

My laugh rattles and swoops, 

My voice trips and rolls.

In my copper brain it paces. 

Words lie in heaps. 

Sometimes I pick up one and hold it to the light, 

balancing it on my tongue. 

But I drop the noise,

letting it fall back into my lungs,

my vocal chords embracing like victims.            

                          Sometimes I scream them, though-

This is when I hear my parents the loudest.

From my lips, they wander into focus:

A moon and a meteorite

colliding-

and I am their echo.