Every Time I Choose English

I am your favorite sound.
Say galangal and the tongue
retreats. Say rhizome and the rootstalk
shoots out new growth.
We pull it from the ground,
carry it gently: a hand. A harvest
of red-veined petals we rub
on our lips. Tonight, when my ear hungers,
I will feed it song. The metallic talk
of hummingbirds. The unfolding of a letter,
a shovel hitting rock, the echo. Laughter
like rain in buckets. Each night I thank
my inner ear: you are the engine of sound,
of miracle. You make me possible.

My parents believed some things are possible
for some people. They listened to cassette
tapes while I ran through sprinklers.
We watched helicopter seeds twirl
over the balcony. They never dreamed
I could wield a shovel so well.
They were born in an orchard.
One dangled from a branch,
greening in the wind. One a soft thud.
I grew seeds and spit them out,
wet like a fish. Can I say my body is a fish?
In this poem I don’t have to make
sense, just sounds. I reddened
at dusk. Fell and rolled and rolled.

At dusk I watch the sky fall. I roll
my sleeves up, bury myself in Virginia soil.
There are legs here. Hands. I move mountains
of earth and tomorrow people
will look to the sky for rain. When rot falls
between their phantom fingers,
they’ll wonder why they can’t remember
their name or the word for bitter melon.
The shape of a storm. I didn’t kill anyone,
just took parts. They say a little blood
helps the garden grow. What about a little red
in the mouth, pumping through the inner
chamber of the ear where the snail
burrows, where I bury a garden of bells?

I bury a garden of bells.
I bury the backyard bird’s nest,
the scent of my first love’s
perfume. I bury
my mother’s misplaced
birthday. The memory of my father
in the hotel dumpster searching
for his crown. All the years
he didn’t brush his teeth, I bury.
All the grandparents I never met.
I bury their names beside the snake
skin from summer camp
and an ex-lover’s ears.
I come alive with a shovel. I bury that too.

I come alive at touch.
To touch the skin of memory
is akin to crushing galangal:
press the cold blade flat against the root
and release. A phantom language
erupts, neither mine nor yours—
I sow the garden with it,
wary of the nights where I appear
as white women. In these dreams
I have a high ponytail.
I am letting my plants die
and rejoicing. Even in dreaming
I cannot escape whiteness, only bury
it so that something else might grow.

The red in the garden grows,
and the bellows of my lungs
catch sound. The tongue runs away
with it. Outside my mother steals
flowers for me, pulls them up by the roots
until Plaza security sends a cease
and desist. She sews collective memory
into the lines of my palms,
and I turn language over like a stone.
I want to sound as impossible
as the hummingbird flying from one
unfolding bud to the next,
for whom a minute lasts 1,260 heartbeats.
1,260 times the heart squeezes like a fist.

All muscle, miracle—the heart is not a fist
but a four-room chamber I enter
and exit, blue with desire.
Desire.
I trace it back to the half-light
before dusk when the humming
of the earth is louder
than my shovel.
In that hour, I see a grave
for what it is—another room
in the earth I have yet to pass
through. I don’t desire
to leave, only to go
back to the beginning.

Let’s go back to the orchard where my parents
were born, turning in the wind,
in the blue light where I hand-fed
the horses turning wild, turning blue,
where I never thought of myself
as anything but red, blooming
in the garden, in the mouth,
where I learned the taste of blood,
desired to be green, moss,
to go back to the horses, the orchard, the garden
where I didn’t kill anyone, just took parts
and carried them gently, cold blade
against the root, and our veins,
our veins were wild horses running blue.

Our veins were wild horses running blue.
We soared over ditches,
high and mightily. Worked up
an appetite. Meaning, I want your song.
Meaning, losing a finger
isn’t so different from losing
a language. I’ll even let you decide
which finger. When you lose a limb
a phantom one takes its place.
Take galangal: bury a hand
of it in shade and watch it grow.
I’m lying, of course. Not about the galangal
but everything else. Why give away
the language of our survival?

My parents dream of survival.
They see the future in the clouds,
and it goes on for miles. I’ve seen it too.
Little cotton ball clouds. Little puffs of memory
we pull apart like candy, that cast shadows
over the winter greens nipping at my feet.
I like to view the future best through storm clouds.
The rain turns everything to mud
and we collect fallen petals to press
between newspaper. Years later
we’ll return to these pages, the forgotten
flowers, how vivid their colors still.
But it’s hard to imagine now.
How a pressed petal survives.

To survive, look to the weeds.
The dandelions and crabgrass,
the creeping buttercups
collecting sun. We were once wild,
you know. The body
goes blue with remembering
but the damp earth forgets nothing,
not even the musculature
of my name, and I am grateful.
To know each weed
is to know how to lay waste.
When you speak my name,
do it well. But know
you cannot diminish me.

You cannot diminish me.
Every day I grow seeds and spit them out,
wet like a fish. Yes, I can
say that. In this poem
I am sound. I am the orchard
where I first chose English.
I redden at the memory.
How could I know what I was losing?
Sometimes in my dreams
I am still the white women,
but now I am counting clouds.
When I appear as myself, I am falling
and rolling and rolling.
Won’t you leave something in my path?

Leave something in the garden path
to show me you are still listening.
Leave me the animal sound
you make upon waking
and the words you love to say
the most. I want to know why
I find them more beautiful
than my own. My favorites include:
Thatch. Filament. Labyrinth.
Also muscle, which comes from the Latin
musculus meaning “little mouse.”
Imagine! Little mice treading
over our body’s earth
and the tongue no longer retreating.

My tongue no longer retreats
but I am still learning how to be loud.
Like the hummingbirds. One perches
above my mother’s stolen flowers
and I think that is a sign. Of what, I’m not sure yet.
Something has been digging up
the garden beds and leaving no trace.
I can see where I buried the forgotten
birthday and where I laid down
my shovel. Come find me.
I’ll be sitting by the white clover
listening to the birds. Someone
has been unburying everything,
and I can’t be sure it wasn’t me.

How to be my own favorite sound?
My parents believed some things are possible.
At dusk the sky falls
and I bury a garden of bells,
come alive at touch.
The red in the garden grows—
all muscle, miracle. The heart is not a fist
but an orchard where
wild horses run blue
and my parents dream of survival.
They look to the weeds,
not to be diminished.
In the garden
of my tongue, I no longer retreat.