Mouth
dark sea cave
where the tongue rounds,
thrusts quick to the edge
then back again.
A long time I stare
there, like falling
into night if night
were a tide pool.
All that energy in your tongue
darting code I can’t read.
Left arm bent,
an involuntary lifting
(back of your hand to your face
to ward off—what?)
how it looks like a broken wing.
Your skin slackening,
your face, the bony skull
of anatomy books,
small burls of your knees,
hip bones, two beaks pushing upward
as if the skeleton could rise
through diminishing muscle and flesh—
strange bird about to be born
I want every last minute
fiercely as the toddler who screamed
and refused to relinquish your hand.
You’ll wait till I’ve gone.
Kathleen Aguero’s most recent book of poetry is World Happiness Index from Tiger Bark Books. Her other poetry collections include After That, Investigations: The Mystery of the Girl Sleuth, Daughter Of, The Real Weather, and Thirsty Day. She has co-edited three volumes of multi-cultural literature for the University of Georgia Press (A Gift of Tongues, An Ear to the Ground, and Daily Fare). She teaches in the Solstice low-residency M.F.A. program at Lasell University and in Changing Lives through Literature, an alternative sentencing program. Kathleen has received grants from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and the Elgin Cox foundation.
