1

they took my mouth away
I was in the middle of saying
something I don’t remember
what

there were two of them
an army
a flock
an encrustation
they had mouths
they were wide open
they were saying
maybe it was
we’s got this wheelbarrow filled with teeth
or
climb right in the belly’s waiting
or
some places it’s so hot you can’t write on the back of a mule because
the gol’darn mule hairs would ignite
and this would dazzle those with one screwed-up eye
looking out at the stars through a telescope
and even though the eye’s closed tight
all that mule dazzle would shine right through the closed lid
and we’re hoping that you understand that which we are saying
that it shines through you
though you are a closed eyelid
a stubborn star
mule-years away
some kind of nautical instrument
like maybe a zither

2

I was silent
when they took my mouth away
I only tried to scream when
they put my mouth in
the wheelbarrow with all the other mouths
but by then
I had no mouth

I did all I could
I thrust my empty face toward them
I twitched my nose
I was a huge and dissenting rabbit
and my tongue was
trapped inside me

3

I’m not proud of myself
but I am proud of my tongue

it was a limbo dancer
it twisted its muscular body up through my nose
and out my left nostril
it left the silent shell of my body
began forming into the faster vowels
chasing the barrow of mouths
down the street

godspeed, noble tongue
do not fail as you have failed before
at cocktail parties
job interviews
in the creation of
an accessible yet meaningful literature that is not marginalized
      for reasons of either culture or economics

of course I didn’t really say this
indeed I had neither mouth nor tongue
but I puffed my chin out
held my belly high
and I watched my arching crimson slug
slather toward the salvation of
my press-ganged mouth

4

why couldn’t my tongue create an accessible yet meaningful
      literature?
why was it marginalized for reasons of either culture,
      economics, or the radiantly glowing corn dog setting in
      the cultures of the west?
I’ve always liked corn dogs
the brittle skeletons of crows crackling and falling like unsavoury snow
late nights over freeways
and really I’ve always felt close to my tongue
sitting together while the moon
shuddered over popcorn
and the VCR played the credits again and again
without mentioning me
neither gaffer
nor bankable action star
hair towering like profits high above me
my tongue and I
close friends with little to say
then my tongue thinks of something
and it’s just what I was going to say
– almost –

5

my tongue was gaining on them
the velvet dove
that I’d sent from
the teeming ark of my face
was catching up

they went into a bagel shop
and my tongue followed
they went into a butcher shop
and my tongue followed
they went into a bookstore
bought several key texts from the western canon
escaped out a bathroom window
and my tongue followed
they double-parked their barrow of mouths
outside the dentist’s
and my tongue followed
hoping to create a diversion with dental floss
but they left for the beach
before my tongue was there
and climbed aboard a clipper ship
and my tongue attempted to follow them up the gangplank
but it slipped
was left raging diphthong and fricative from the empty dock
as the ship pulled away

and I
despairing
began to compose a ballad beginning
‘to what distant isle would my mouth be taken
a sailor for to be?’
but my tongue wasn’t one for sitting around
it was a tongue for action
it hopped aboard a personal watercraft and
followed my mouth across the lisping sea

6

the spitting surf was foaming high
the sky was a stuttering plosive
but for all I know
there in its little craft
my tongue began to carve out of the briny air
a literature if not meaningful
if not accessible
(indeed how could it be accessible
adrift in the alveolar ridges of
the ocean’s salty maw)
then at least a literature
ripe with the pungent joy
the chaffing sorrows
of tonguehood
brazen with the quantifiable knowledge of western corn dogs
but I don’t know this
I’m left with my silent face
my jaw a deserted church
only a memory of prayer
filling the aisles of teeth

my tongue is now beyond my ken

I must rely on you
Dear Reader who might stumble
upon the words of my tongue
nestled upon some foreign
shore in a bookcase amid the dunes
for I am left alone to tell
without a hope of telling
what happened to my stolen mouth
my valiant tongue

7

ah but I had great dreams for this mouth
I imagined one day it would open
beyond the possible
encompassing stars
its every inhalation sucking
into its wet vacancy
the comet’s frozen fire
both space and time bending around
my tongue
the worm at the centre of this toothy well-maintained
void
but now like a mule without hair
I am bereft
my story slides from my slippery skin
and into the dust at my expressionless hooves
it’s just you and me
Dear Reader
and we like adolescents
holding up the walls at a school dance
can say nothing
only breathe in the air of the hot gymnasium
where earlier
pigs were dissected
and basketball teams rose and fell
like telescopes tossed into the sky
and we attempt to navigate
by the light of a battery-operated
zither

8

but let us go back to when
my mouth was but the absence of face
below delicate hairs that could have grown from the back
of a suckling pig
yes follow me to a time when
my tongue was but a red nerve
dancing
to the fiddle of my brain
my brain itself stoked by the horsehairs
of youth
they cannot pursue us here
these coveters of mouth with their wheelbarrow
for wheelbarrows don’t fit through
the small screwed-up aperture
of memory
and anyway I had to ask my mother if
you could come too

tell them to wipe their feet
she said
tell them to take off their shoes
she said
I assured her that you were
only an eye or an ear
you’d leave no footprints
on our story
you were a neat and careful reader and
never interrupted the narrative

right?

9

as I thought
being only ear or eye
you have no mouth to speak of
your disdain must be silent
but shh come near
hear me say it
‘I have lost my way’
there I have said
‘I have lost my way’

what could happen now?
the triumphant return
my tongue wrapped
in glory round
my sorrowful mouth
the brazen glint of victorious teeth
huzzahs and well-crafted
whoops from platforms and podiums

I could refuse to return to the present
spend my days filling
bedrooms with salt
shopping carts with the confetti-like remains of
spacetime
perhaps I will venture to
the bookstore
the home shelf
the library
the moon is full
I hold my eraser like
a broken heart
I begin erasing until
there is nothing but
speechlessness and
library fines

shh come near again
yes nearer
here is a banana peel
I place it at your feet
it will be a surprise
you slip on the peel
knock yourself out on
the corner of my desk
that will be nasty bump come morning

I flash a knife like a guillotine
and your ear is gone
again a knife flash and
I separate your eye from that mess of nerves
a few stitches and
your ear has now taken my mouth’s place
I push your eye through
my new mouth’s earhole
and I have a tongue again
it blinks
squints
even weeps
but ’tis enough, ’twill serve
’tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as
a church door
a dog, a rat, a mouse, a mule
it fights by the book
why the devil came you between us?
my ear-mouth says
I was hurt under your eye
and now they have made worms’ meat of me
take me to the red cave where
I might sleep