the girls speak to each other via the common tongue
Ellen Welcker

 

 

                                       yes

                                       I am here

                                                                                           here with my

                                                                                           weighted, fraught

 

 

 

                 no explanation

 

 

                                                                                                      endless iterations

 

 

       infinity of slants

 

                                                                               that all sound like asking

 

 

       to become feral is

 

                                                                                                      to metamorphose

 

 

                       with and into

 

                                                                                           sound

 

 

                                                     how                    I know

 

                                                               how                       I know

 

                                       what                 you’re doing

 

                                                     with                   your mouth

 

 

       a slow build to recognizable

                       strings

 

                                                                                           a sister is a kind of a sister

 

 

                 for talking gibberish

 

                                                                               in supermarkets

 

or to love and miss

 

                                                                                           to rhino and horse

 

       to hate and grass-hate

 

 

                                                               I never wanted to die, like

                                                                               that scrape on my tender under

 

 

       never wanted to kill myself

       talk gibberish in supermarkets

 

 

                                                                                           breastfeed

 

 

                            incite

 

                                                                               language and trees

 

 

                 don’t want to be “used”

 

 

                                                                                                      I do not crave

                                                                                                      a fake beef braid

 

                       just a board to break

                                       w my mind

 

 

                                                               a little nurse in the eye

 

 

                                                     for sadness

 

 

~~~~~

Ellen Welcker is the author of Ram Hands (Scablands Books, 2016) & The Botanical Garden (Astrophil Press, 2010). This poem is part of a book-length poem called “The Pink Tablet.” She lives in Spokane, WA.