FIRST LINE, SECOND STANZA

At that point I stopped.
There was no name
for each and every one of those dirty looks I was getting—
the shrug, the raised eyebrow.
My mother’s tongue had interrupted the flow,
and the universe wasn’t holding its breath.
Even so, on the first line, second stanza,
I was suddenly un-landed.
Deciding whether we are interested in pursuing the work you
presented,
there are certain aspects of your voice we are unable to
consider.
I was not waving
but lying in a ditch I was digging for myself,
my mother’s tongue exposed.
Oh, the arrogance of this cur,
the incongruity,
querying a magazine in which you long to appear
without even having
bought a copy.

A knife through the heart
was how my mother’s tongue
was described.
I basked in the shade of my common mistake,

my caesura.

I wound it round my mother’s tongue