--- A M Y   H O L M A N

	“No, I don’t mean boardroom French, I mean the cups and spoons, the leaves.” -- S.A.

What if I must rely on lip readers 
and I speak languish instead of language? 
Not the deaf who know the joint--
fingers spelling tired mouths--but the spies 
who mostly betray and sometimes portray. 
Or the northern spies, apples of deceit 
both sweet and tart. Language is an art 
and common ground, requiring sight and sound, 
or context. Art is the curfew 
on commonality, the part of languish 
that lingers. I want more than to be merely 
understood, like simply surviving, or 
only on my own. I’d like to navigate uncertainty 
in another tongue rather than say what I mean 
to someone here who isn’t listening. Oh, 
the luxury of me, untranslated, learning the slang 
of someone else. Pass the sugar, read the tea. 
Is future the fortune or present the opening 
to pass through? I don’t think we change 
even if we’re changeable--the glass half full 
one day, half empty the next, but never the water 
carrying the glass away. One day I like to ride out 
into the city, the next hide out 
at home. We are confined by who we are 
more than what we say, even if the lip readers 
read language on the day of languish, and tell.