love on my mother's tongue, 1983
māmā will tell me about her sweet
potatoes, & laugh. she’ll tell me about how they’d
chew the fields to the bone, matchstick-
woven feet tripping wilder fires across the
wood. she’ll tell me about how they
scooped up the earth, made a home
in its belly, left the crops to sleep
beneath heaps of hot ash, to eat later
& māmā will wring those three syllables
until they are dry, let the pulp sink right back
into her throat, collect them like
empty air in a crate, feel their heaviness
like a welt. she’ll watch me try to
peel off their husks, though i’ll fail because
her tongue is shaped less like screenplay,
more like smouldered gingko, swollen sky
& māmā will make me hungry for
something that i can’t sink my teeth into, like
the secrets harboured in lost homeland dirt.
well, love on my mother’s tongue tastes just
like them: a buried thing, but never not
plump, ripe, sweeter than our teeth can take
& here there is no need for unearthing.
no need for words
at all.
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