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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.

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Summer 2019
ISSN 2157-8079
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