Linguistics Lynn Domina The orderly aisle: fettuccini, fusilli, rigatoni, round, folded orecchietti, edible ears; cappellini’s wispy strands, trumpets, wagon wheels, screws; for white clam sauce, I choose linguini. ii. In amphibia–the frog who nestles her filmy eggs in your koi pond, the toad hunched among your hostas — it is fixed at the front, free behind, the better to dart forward, lick up mosquitoes, gnats, curl itself around black flies. In the house sparrow you overlook, searching for finches, orioles, ladderback woodpeckers, it is pointed, hard as a toenail. In anteaters it wriggles, wormlike, burrowing toward lunch. In humans it tapers, muscular, fleshy, permits us to invent words: luculent, disciple, nocturnal, to label our opponents taciturn. iii Moses objected that his slow tongue stumbled over strong words, urged God to find another prophet, but God suggested Aaron speak for Moses–Aaron, eloquent as a poet though but a priest. iv. She sells seashells by the seashore. The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick. A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse. v. For no good reason, I’m skeptical of Pliny’s legend, gluttonous Romans dining sumptuously on flamingo tongue. I believe I’ve seen colonies glide into brackish Florida estuaries, dip their beaks, hunting, hunting. Once I woke from a dream, panicked shrimp roiling in my mouth, my lips slick with brine. But didn’t I see a creche of five thousand young, their plumage deeply pink, their eager bills, though each seems more impression than memory. Haven’t we all seen rotting herds shot from trains, taken for their tongues alone? We shot nothing, refuse our ancestors’ guilt, yet every night our dreams resound with the gavel’s bang. vi. Every gift of tongues shall be accompanied by the gift of interpretation. vii. Ancient bestiaries reveal how serpents sting with their tongues’ fiery edge. A boy’s skin burns, flame rippling up his forearm, the scar crimson, undulant. Serpents die ten thousand times but die finally if a birthmarked girl drips her thimbleful of blood outside its den. viii. Pentecost, the sanctuary swirled with red–and–yellow banners as gossamer doves swept over our heads. Veni Sancti Spiritus we heard, each in our own language. Weren’t we each lighted with fire, weren’t we each burnt, consumed, our tongues tongues of flame? ix. Today, English serves as lingua franca for those who profess a common language. I mention Lake Michigan, remembering its endless cool invitation, my urge to drift, oblivious of shore or depth, waves lifting my shoulders, then hips, my thighs, currents tugging my body away, away, but you grimace, for your brother did drown, tempted by your dare: dive right in. You imagined his blond hair flashed red with blood before the lake washed him clean. Because your mother never speaks his name, you whispered it once, then swore me to silence. x. Too often I’ve held my tongue, afraid, aswarm with darkness. Here are all the ways you could do it–No, I won’t say it. xi. Medieval monks slept in their coffins. Cash Bundren sawed planks for his mother’s coffin, planed their edges as Dewey Dell fanned flies from her face, and she lay remembering why she named one son Jewel. No one has written why I followed a man I knew only as Mr. Jewel into his barn, how he pointed out the forged, square nails, each stall’s tongue–and–groove construction, how the next day he looped his rope over a weathered beam, climbed onto a milk crate, kicked it away. xii. When the man asked to be cured of his faulty speech, Jesus touched his tongue, pressing his calloused forefinger against its fleshy center. The man felt words well within him, words of the law and prophets; he felt creatures swirling in his mouth, and when he opened his lips, they soared like doves, their soft feathers brushing his neighbors’ ears, every word perfectly clear and yet still sounding like miracle, miracle, miracle. Lynn Domina is the author of two collections of poetry, Corporal Works and Framed in Silence, and the editor of a collection of essays, Poets on the Psalms. Her work appears in the New England Review, Prairie Schooner, the Southern Review, the Valparaiso Poetry Review, and several other periodicals. She currently lives in the western Catskill region of New York. “Linguistics” appears in our Spring 2012 issue.