By Annette Galiardi
Des Moines Branch, Iowa

 

 

Words fight and scratch

                                           to escape,

make my fingers

                  bleed with their urgency

to slip out without ink —

 

they jump from my mouth like

                  frogs in a heated pot —

the urgency of necessity.

 

Each word, after being spoken,

                 is frozen                     in time;

afraid of being repeated.

                They bend and break

like dry grass mowed down.

 

Some words become merely

                lies – lies we cannot forget;

these are the ones we spit out

                and don’t

use again;         the ones that tremble

 

               like a broken

mirror with the shards

               holding their breath

lest they fall — shattering.

 

A few usable truths strut

and stagger when readers share

tidbits of time — split the seamless sky

             that turns wild with sound.

 

Pieces are buried with us, repenting.

              Those who thought they

knew us,            use our own flightless words —

those few words they’ve captured      – to remember.

 

Inspired by: “What are words but lies?” (Victoria Chang)

                     “We need words that we cannot forget.” (W.S. Merwin “language’)

                     “This is where the poem holds its breath,

                        where the usable truth sways, sorrowing” ( from Etta’s Elegy by Maureen Seaton)