Each Sound<\/b>
\nby Dorianne Laux<\/i><\/p>\n
Beginnings are brutal, like this accident
\nof stars colliding, mute explosions
\nof colorful gases, the mist and dust
\nthat would become our bodies
\nhurling through black holes, rising,
\nmuck ridden, from pits of tar and clay.
\nBack then it was easy to have teeth,
\nclaw our ways into the trees \u2014 it was
\naccepted, the monkeys loved us, sat
\non their red asses clapping and laughing.
\nWe\u2019ve forgotten the luxury of dumbness,
\nhow once we crouched naked on an outcrop
\nof rock, the moon huge and untouched
\nabove us, speechless. Now we talk
\nabout everything, incessantly,
\nour moans and grunts turned on a spit
\ninto warm vowels and elegant consonants.
\nWe say plethora, demitasse, ozone and love.
\nWe think we know what each sound means.
\nThere are times when something so joyous
\nor so horrible happens our only response
\nis an intake of breath, and then
\nwe\u2019re back at the truth of it,
\nthat ball of life expanding
\nand exploding on impact, our heads,
\nour chest, filled with that first
\nunspeakable light.<\/p>\n
There was a kiss that tasted like re\u00ebntry, the sky hitting the brakes with a roar, that blazing, intimate acceptance of a spacecraft into atmosphere, every unlikely angle, one head tilting to another, a scorched, soft light jet-stream wish to return home. History made and slammed back like a shotgun round. A promise on the wing, the ground salted, memories buried. The cast lines up, takes a bow, walks off stage, and leaves their shadows behind as the curtain falls, and it tasted like hello as well as goodbye. My apartment is choked with memories, my neighborhood is a cemetery, same as the highway south, much like my life. <\/p>\n
He asked for my writing once, to permanently tattoo, something short, beautiful, meaningful. “Between our hands, we could have made fire”. To the death, he said, to the guttering of the sun. (The next one, he gave me nothing I have not been able to give back.) In the archives, our shared love, deliberate and valiant, a blazing comet made of fiercely bared skin, and the small delicate jewelry we wore in our ears, drops of garnet dipped in silver, lost but unforgotten. I send him a message just after midnight, from a number he doesn’t know: I am still wearing your name at the base of my breath.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Each Sound by Dorianne Laux Beginnings are brutal, like this accident of stars colliding, mute explosions of colorful gases, the mist and dust that would become our bodies hurling through black holes, rising, muck ridden, from pits of tar and clay. Back then it was easy to have teeth, claw our ways into the trees … Continue reading “I am lost”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,636,128,407,1580,638,1620],"class_list":["post-3735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-love","tag-love-letters","tag-poetry","tag-ships-on-the-horizon","tag-verses","tag-wasting-time","tag-woodcutter-wolf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}