The Tongue Does Not Believe

By Alayna Powell

i. It’s almost like the tongue has an empty stomach

and a taste for justice – whatever that may be, on any given day.

No, it wasn’t hunger that compelled me, but spite: hardened

in the space between teeth, making home out of a nothingness

so miniscule that only darkness could attest for it.

ii. It’s almost if the tongue is saying I shouldn’t have to feel this way and she’s right.

There are many things in life that faintly resemble God, and once in a poem I swore

she looked like me.

I have never been more wrong – fingers hunched,

pen practically begging for something to believe in

or out,

iii. Yesterday’s justice was a dry sob,

my roommate’s belongings strewn on the front lawn,

and cops standing over me, arms crossed.

iv. The tongue does not believe in moderation. She never has.

Tens of thousands of taste receptors,

budding and rebudding…

v. To misunderstand the tongue is violence—

and it is all I’ve ever known.

Source: Rogue Agent Journal, Issue 66 (Rogue Agent Journal, 2020)

Disability Poetics