San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly

Ashaki M. Jackson

LANGUAGE LESSON

 

The mouth opens like a grave

 

*

 

Our mouths open like her grave

 

*

 

Our mouths: her grave   thick-

tongued cavern   From our throats she blooms

Sunday hymn toward a quiet sky

 

*

 

Thick-tongued quiet   Our mouths

caverns   graves   Our throats

bloom a Sunday sky hymn

 

*

 

Throat hymns

The sky: a grave of tongues

Thick blooms quiet our cavernous mouths

like a Sunday

 

*

 

Our mouths   Our

mouths   Our mouths  

Our mouths   quiet

 

And sky