Member Poem

All these language games,
these splicing and slicing symphonies
that you carved your syllables into,
singing – they kill me. I adore the manipulation
of the vernacular, the dexterity
of your tongue shaping sounds out of the sea,
coaxing even the sirens to sing
or to simmer. Someday they’ll crush your skull,
break your bones, batter your body; someday
they’ll smash your sentences straight into the rocks
with no regard for the letters lost.
Until then, I like to keep
what’s between your teeth
between my own. I’ve always been prone
to linguistics, to lovers,
drawn to your personal dialect 
(and the way it hums, like bone).