AQUATELOS A Thesis Presented to the Faculty ... - Cornell University

2. GSL
how tricky licking the tongue down the ladders
of a second language when it’s our first, a mother
tongue ironically discovered mid-twentieth century with its odd
notions of determination and right. when it’s a tongue our tongues
get tangled in, not a language at all but a bandage spliced
across heaving gaps in matter till eyeballs are engineered
and fine cilia for pleasurable motions, organelles churning
out their protoplasmic chimneys toxins by the gram—
it’s confusing since it’s a tunnel, a long black wavering
throat we walk towards leading our menagerie, our dollies
and fishy tomatoes, our mice all ears and our prickdo-we-not-bleed
pigs. it’s frightening, one might
say if one came up for air, pulled wads of coding
out of one’s mouth and spoke in that dead drear useless
speech of English, Chinese, Spanish, German, French.
the new lingua franca crowds the echoes thinning up against
the cavern-roof, palatelike with whorl-murals of perfect evolution.
the throat, the tunnel whistles, or it clicks, and unknown
odors scale the rungs from far beyond our sight. but it’s all right—
we’ll walk in comfortably led, provisioned by our inquisitions
with our tender guide, a cute white rabbit glowing green.
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