Sonnet (The Mouth)
by Bailey Alejandro Cohen-Vera
“I have been so careless with the words I already have.” –Kaveh Akbar
i.
I don’t want anyone
to tell me what I could have guessed—
that the mouth is a pit
for language.
ii.
The mouth tenders
dialects like a mother
hen sits
on what it grows.
iii.
I want to nestle the mouth
until it has done its clucking.
iv.
For breakfast, I eat the mouth’s
silent children
& it feels like glue
on the pink roof of my palate. I dream
that my tongue has swelled
& all my teeth are falling
out.
v.
I dream of two countries—
one grabs my hair
by the fistful,
the other nibbles
my toenails & waits
to bite.
vi.
I dream of learning.
I want to learn
how people learn
to know
when a boy is old enough
to forget
his language, when he is ready
to be shredded.
vii.
I know little of what shreds
a child into a man, but think
one is best
when he is begging.
I want to be both: a boy
& the woman he desires.
viii.
I want to be the queerest
of kings.
To dribble down a jawline
like rain. Maybe, the mouth
is a lake. Maybe, I have grown
in the mouth like a weed.
ix.
When the mouth is gentle
to me, one might see me dancing
in the low tide. Maybe, I am ready
to be plucked. Maybe, the mouth
is a crater
for the tongue.
x.
I forget the word for tongue
in Spanish when a relative
asks me what I have bitten.
Instead, I say Mi boca es un cajón
lleno de cuchillos. Everybody
knows what I mean.
xi.
By my age, my mother would have left
her country.
According to this measure
of courage, I am a coward
& ungrateful. My mother
says that she loves me & calls me
sharp-
tongued. I know what
my mouth can hold & it
is far too little. It juggles
words like a pocket might
with coins. Maybe, language
is a currency. Maybe,
language is power.
Maybe, knowledge is stored
in the mouth.
xii.
I do not know how to say my sexuality
in the language my mother was speaking
when she was my age
so I coward
my longing
into English.
xiii.
All I want to know
is everything
that my mother
ever said.
xiv.
All I want
is to be a country
where breath
can stay
until ready to leave
the soft give
of my wet
& pink mouth.
Bailey Alejandro Cohen-Vera is the author of Self-Portraits as Yurico (Glass Poetry Press 2020). The associate editor for Frontier Poetry as well as the founder of Alegrarse, a journal for poetry. His poems can be found in publications such as Muzzle Magazine, Southern Indiana Review, Boulevard, Raleigh Review, Longleaf Review, and Boiler Journal, among elsewhere. Currently, Bailey is an undergraduate student at NYU, where he is completing a thesis on revolutionary thought.
