A Woman Talks to Her Tongue
1.
Sometimes I wonder if the cat has caught you,
swallowed you like an oily sardine.
Perhaps you got lost in the soft cavern of my left cheek,
waylaid by an avoidance of truth.
It’s possible you were tied to the floor of my mouth,
bound by a too-tight frenulum,
or swollen to silence by an anaphylaxis of sorts;
an allergy to secrets (not shellfish).
2.
Once, I worked with others like you, prodding
small mounds of muscle with a flat wooden stick.
I shone a pen-light into each pink cathedral,
illuminated the curve and fall of palatal arches—Say ah.
The surfaces glistened; blushing mucosa stippled
with buds (or papillae, if you want to sound fancy),
sometimes coated in pale grey fur from pooling saliva,
and grief that couldn’t be swallowed.
3.
Your kind can writhe and flicker, ripple your belly
with unchecked movement—fasciculations.
How neatly the tongue sat in the mouth,
as I checked for signs of deviation.
Please poke out your tongue. This can be difficult
in front of a mirror in a hospital room,
under bright lights where you have met for the first time.
Now, can you move it quickly, from left to right?
4.
Tongues can atrophy like the heart, waste away
with weakness after a single assault.
Exhausted fish caught on a handline, they distort
vowels and insert glottal stops
when you least expect it. Repeat after me: Puh Tuh Kuh.
It’s easier if you start off slow, approach
each consonant gently, as though you were rolling
a sea anemone in your mouth.
5.
Can you touch your nose with your tongue? Like this.
Dexterity is needed for mastication.
Now I have your attention! But it’s not your eating
I’m interested in. Do you remember
our first kiss? At the school fair, on a wooden bench,
his pimpled boy-face moving closer.
The shock and thrust of it, a wild eel pushed between
our teeth. So curious, that taste of tobacco.
6.
I met a man who had a quarter of a tongue,
still smoked through a stoma in his neck.
We burped his name and the days of the week, one syllable
at a time. Another woke from his coma
sounding like a German pixie. His vocal cords were taut
with damage, his tongue domed in his mouth.
He warped articulations across geography and fairy tales.
There were other tongues too—and then, there is you.
7.
Women have been tortured like this—their tongues
pinned with a Scold’s bridle.
What is your excuse? We are neither witch nor hag.
Ignore the muttering inside our head—
set your tip behind our top teeth where No is formed.
Be ready—I want to roll our eyes back and fall
into an ecstasy of words. I will untie you and say only
what is true. Let’s whisper glossolalia.
After 39 Years, a Photograph Speaks
Look at this: a family of twelve, blended
and extended, gathers around a lounge
that blooms cabbage roses.
They pose after dinner in the sitting room.
Adults except for a spectacled nephew,
cross-legged on the floor.
Your aunt and uncle visiting from California.
He’s behind the camera showing you
how to smile with your teeth.
Say Hersh–eys! You’re squeezed together, seated
with your three sisters and a moustached
brother-in-law. He’s a psychiatrist,
handy during those later years. Two more brothers-in-law
stand behind with your parents and aunt.
One, a young Al Pacino, the other, Jesus.
Your father in et another illustrated shirt.
Open necked, with brown etchings
—gondolas moored on the Grand Canal.
He clasps your mother so she is angled toward him.
Her geometric dress, her wedding pearls.
She doesn’t look at the camera.
Instead, she smiles at you. Your aunt, soft waves
of American hair, stands next to her brother
in his gondola shirt. She doesn’t know
she’ll be alive at 101, her mind as clear as a diamond.
There is so much that’s unknown. One sister
will die young. No Jesus can save her.
Tilt me like a hologram and you’ll sense something
leaks. A father’s noxious secret seeps
through the family. Invisible as hydrogen.
until a sister lights the match.
Glamour Nails
We sit side by side, on vinyl recliners, a newly crowned king and
queen. Our backs are kneaded and pummelled like bread dough.
Your deep voice judders above the froth and bubble of footbaths.
I was curious when you asked to join me for a mani-pedi at
Glamour Nails. Now, I listen to you talk after three years of single
teen grunts. Yeah. Nuh. Stuff. Lin runs more hot water into our
tubs and pours in a steady stream of blue crystals. You’re a lucky
Mum. Such a strong, handsome boy. You pay little attention to
her as you fan the sample nail designs on your lap. I worry that
you’ll get in trouble at school. Just one thumb Mum, it’ll be fine.
You choose a French bulldog and I choose Kiss me, I’m kind, the
latest pale pink in gel. I close my eyes and we’re quiet for a while.
Last week you took
a girl to a formal. You were excited for weeks about the beauty of
corsage blooms and your new Italian suit. That evening, you
called and asked me to pick you up early. Silence filled the car as
we drove home around the bay. On the salon wall, hangs a
picture of two perfect hands with nails like painted moons,
clasping an Arum lily. A young woman finishes the ears of your
bulldog with a fine brush while Lin trims my cuticles. And then
you tell me something I have always known.
These poems are excerpted from A Woman Talks to Her Tongue by Alison Gorman, available from 5 Islands Press.
Alison Gorman is a poet, teacher, and former speech pathologist who lives in Sydney. Her poetry has appeared in Cordite, Island, Honest Ulsterman, Meanjin, Mslexia, Popshot Quarterly, Southerly and Southword. She was awarded the Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize in 2016 and a Varuna Residential Fellowship in 2023. Her poems have been shortlisted in the 2024 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, the Bridport Poetry Prize, the Fish Poetry Prize and the Mslexia Poetry Competition. Her pamphlet was highly commended in the 2024 Mslexia Pamphlet Competition, shortlisted in the Cinnamon Press Literature Awards the same year, and was a finalist in the Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition in 2022. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Sydney. When Alison is not writing poetry, she teaches creative writing to children at Inkling Writing Studio, which she founded in 2018.