Portrait of Mother Tongue

In the womb I learned breath before the throat.

As in the valley, mud-born of yellow chrysanthemum 

before the pale laundry of their ships on the horizon.

The Chinese word for beautiful is an inflection away from the word for rot.

Rot. As in, a chest reamed with geysers. As in,

a star is a wound. They found the first 

character of our language on the cliffs of these floating mountains,

by the river that splits in two. Tongue of dragon, night serpent:

Heed her red cry, the earth    as in, burst.

The brow of mother tongue is a diverging river.

Hollow, an echo, the way

a hummingbird knocks 

Wherein a tapestry of dragonflies seeks

honeyed shelter. Breath in the throat

That lethargic pause, heel 

pressed before the roof shudders, and the light, oh,

how it buries.

The eye of mother tongue is a cave.

They are haunted

by my heart, the rivers that run within,

what my doctor calls loneliness. 

Love letter, as in heartbreak, 

heart that breaks, orange burst.

The mouth of mother tongue is the edge of empire.

For mother tongue,

origin is of things burning. To burn is to return

to the dead. 

The destination of mother tongue is future.

When their ships arrived, so too the ark. Wildebeests,

as in feathered changelings. Gasoline. Rubber sky.

They tried to teach us their way of forcing a mouth.

But how could they when our first language was stone

Our first song the mountains, our first god the rain that sculpted

our bodies from mud. Our mouths are frothed with shards 

of porcelain animals our grandmothers painted. We know only one 

menagerie, tucked behind volumes of translation. 

The sister of mother tongue is the port.

As in, I am waiting for the calligraphy to dry. As in, I can’t

come home next summer. As in, what my doctor calls

loneliness is [  ]. What makes homeland

sweet – as in, elation, reddened, buried. 

The daughter of mother tongue, the people.