“How Delicious to Say It,

to allow it like hibiscus to wend over the tongue

where it opens at the gate, lending its red, unknowable

taste. What wonder the palate may embrace – in a flick

behind the teeth: loquacious, Liebchen, Schätzchen.

Let us praise the labium that shapes such syllables, and

parlay of their attendant assumptions like a shuttlecock

struck back and forth over its simple backyard net.

Let us not neglect, but laud the mature mouth ready

for more than a dollop, the spoonful of lip, loon,

April, billow, or some simple pronoun. No. It wants jouissance,

Dostoevsky, provocations heating the exchange, say

chipotles in the chocolate. Consider the uvular awakenings

of the day, the throat stretched to signify its pleasure and release.

Your name spun through the reel, wound up from the bass

of me. How I want to say it, and hear my own, again.

for Matthew”. — Vievee Francis