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Cymothoa Exigua

By Roger Reeves Roger Reeves

cymothoa exigua*: the tongue as what it is not—blemish

and parasite: gimp and glottal stop: what question can be

answered with a truant mouth: can the lynched man hung

from the sails of a windmill taste the lead pipe wedged

between his lips: when the signifiers dangle, empty chum

lines in a cold creek: when the men in Waco, wearing white

straw hats, fraying at the crisp edges of their white shirts,

leave Jesse, leave John, leave Paul in ashes in the unpaved

streets to choke passing mules into prophecy: when we pinch

our noses to staunch the smell of the twice burnt black man

burning for a third time this day: when the boys, sweet

and good animals, come to what’s been left in shallow ditches:

false rib and femur, clavicle and severed hand—quite simply,

the language of sorrow: glyph of the gadfly rooting himself

into the rotting meat of the dead: when it is too late

to refuse our bodies being made urns: corn, unharvested

and heavy in its husks: when, in the marketplace, the butcher lifts

our tongue from a bed of ice, shouts: who will speak for this flesh:

when the tongue answers as all severed tongues do:

FOOTNOTES: Cymothoa exigua is a parasitic crustacean that attaches itself to the tongues of spotted rose snappers and extracts blood from the tongue until it atrophies and falls off. Then the parasite attaches itself to the nub and acts as the fish’s tongue. According to scientists, the fish is not harmed in the process.

Source: Poetry (December 2008).

Biography

Roger Reeves's poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House, among others. Kim Addonizio selected “Kletic of Walt Whitman” for the Best New Poets 2009 anthology. He was awarded a 2013 NEA Fellowship, Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation in 2008, two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, . . .

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