Kitchen pipes mumble, English bruising on
my tongue as molasses smolders beneath
beaten steel. I’m feeling what English hasn’t,
I say. You let your head roll back & vow
This time I’ll get it, almost to sacchar-
-ine air. But you’ll never draw toska off
your tongue, just as I’ll never taste the split
between melancholy & simple weight.
We wait. Language is a lost god, & yet,
remember? It’s us that cursed faith down the
sink’s drain, boiling pipe rust with human rift—
Toscholy, I mumble. Do we get one
another now? I must learn to, you can’t,
thus I calcinate the kitchen: to know
you in your stubborn English makes me a
traitor, & sets all else aflame, alive.