Devil's Tongue
Prawns and cold wine. Guitars with loosely tuned steel strings.Leg meat arched a few familiar degrees.Let's just say you know what your hands are drawn to.Mind, too. You've started thinking in French again,the language you gave up at age three,meaning it's mostly politeness and the names of colors.Absolutely all apologies are purple. Please some putty gray.Now you're adding four words a day. For starters: rêve, aimer, morts, main.OK, so five if you count serpent, which in most tongues is the same.In most tongues things become themselves by negating others first.First you killed the snake, and then you started thinking.Have you heard the good news? Your skin's gone puce.Your hands much too ruddy to clean the dishes. Pity's never red.You still fall asleep in English, saying no dreams, just wishes. [End Page 173]
Charlie Clark studied poetry at the University of Maryland. His work has appeared in New England Review, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, and other journals. A 2019 NEA fellow, his book, The Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin, will be published by Four Way Books in fall 2020. He lives in Austin, TX.
