Cell Therapy: Mouth
the mouth is a mighty sword/the sword's tongue be numb in the mouth
of the lord/the lord be wondering why the mouth move so much/why
the knees ain’t as nimble as the mouth/how thieving the mouth be/busting
noise and causing other mouths to quiver/a violent act in shutting mouths
with your own/but no one owns the mouth/the mouth owns everyone/no
one knows they just a guest of the mouth/most of these fools think they
run the mouth/find out quick when the mouth sit still/find out truth when
the mouth upturn ugly at the sight of happy/learn who the real boss be when
the mouth pull apart something beautiful at the sight of blood/blood be the
mouth's only friend/blood and tongue and teeth love the mouth vicious/they
be like "look how the mouth protect us little things"/how the mouth pry
itself open and wide for everything/how the mouth look like a cave/how
the mouth hide a body, a whole body inside its pink/how the mouth let a
man make his home inside/how the mouth hide a woman's smile and voice
inside its belly/how the inside of a mouth is the only place women can stay
if they silent
BY MAHOGANY L. BROWNE
Cave Canem Fellow Mahogany L. Browne is the author of several books, including Swag and Dear Twitter: Love Letters Hashed Out On-line, recommended by Small Press Distribution and listed as About.com Best Poetry Books of 2010. She has released five LPs, including the live album Sheroshima. As co-founder of the Off Broadway poetry production, Jam On It, and co-producer of NYC’s 1st Performance Poetry Festival: SoundBites Poetry Festival, Mahogany bridges the gap between lyrical poets and literary emcee. Browne has toured Germany, Amsterdam, England, Canada and recently Australia as 1/3 of the cultural arts exchange project Global Poetics. Her journalism work has been published in magazines Uptown, KING, XXL, The Source, Canada's The Word and UK's MOBO. Her poetry has been published in literary journals Pluck, Literary Bohemian, Bestiary, Brown Girl Love and Up The Staircase. She is an Urban Word NYC mentor, as seen on HBO’s Brave New Voices and facilitates performance poetry and writing workshops throughout the country. She is the publisher of Penmanship Books, a small press for performance artists and owns PoetCD.Com, an on-line marketing and distribution company for poets. Mahogany is the Nuyorican Poets Café Poetry Program Director and curator of their famous Friday Night Slam.