My Music Teacher Starts Each Class with America the Beautiful
In your mouth, the world defines through
difference: the swell of silence between each sound—
erasure as gasp—the distance between breath
and its collapse. My voice gusting like a flame-
licked wood, crescendoing into ash. I have spent
so long kneeling my tongue before you as I choke
on my dust, but I’m growing interested in consequences:
unfilming the meat of my mouth and waiting for speech
to scab. You say the difference between a song and a shout
is the mangling of your voice, but I lose track
of individual wounds—which are mine and which
my mother’s, which ones I know how to claim.
An accumulated roar. I’m writing a version
I can pronounce: the difference between accident and
tragedy is how far the body falls. You know what they say
about empty forests and their trees. I’ve never counted the bodies
between one lineage and the next, but I’m sure
they could fill a forest with graves. Silent from neglect.
A family tree tangling the veins of my wrist, losing
their branches as they climb. In my mouth,
you plant an axe and leave before it cuts, timber
on the ground, absence in the air. You spin amnesia
into mist. Turn away like it absolves you of
hurt—how quiet your metal, how fleeting your crime.
Listen: I’m tired of accidental deaths, of casualties
slurring a chorus beyond the leaves. I’m trying to live
on purpose. Picking my scab-stiff limbs just to hear
my nails scrape, my body harmonizing with itself
as blood winds a language down my calf—
my first fluent tongue. Do you see it now, this endless
score of red? If you lean in, you may hear it speak.
difference: the swell of silence between each sound—
erasure as gasp—the distance between breath
and its collapse. My voice gusting like a flame-
licked wood, crescendoing into ash. I have spent
so long kneeling my tongue before you as I choke
on my dust, but I’m growing interested in consequences:
unfilming the meat of my mouth and waiting for speech
to scab. You say the difference between a song and a shout
is the mangling of your voice, but I lose track
of individual wounds—which are mine and which
my mother’s, which ones I know how to claim.
An accumulated roar. I’m writing a version
I can pronounce: the difference between accident and
tragedy is how far the body falls. You know what they say
about empty forests and their trees. I’ve never counted the bodies
between one lineage and the next, but I’m sure
they could fill a forest with graves. Silent from neglect.
A family tree tangling the veins of my wrist, losing
their branches as they climb. In my mouth,
you plant an axe and leave before it cuts, timber
on the ground, absence in the air. You spin amnesia
into mist. Turn away like it absolves you of
hurt—how quiet your metal, how fleeting your crime.
Listen: I’m tired of accidental deaths, of casualties
slurring a chorus beyond the leaves. I’m trying to live
on purpose. Picking my scab-stiff limbs just to hear
my nails scrape, my body harmonizing with itself
as blood winds a language down my calf—
my first fluent tongue. Do you see it now, this endless
score of red? If you lean in, you may hear it speak.
September / October, 2022
Nova Wang is probably thinking about ghosts. Her writing is forthcoming or published in publications including Frontier Poetry, Fractured Lit, and Up the Staircase Quarterly, and she tweets @novawangwrites.
Art: Madge Evers. Dust in the Nursery. Mushroom spores on cyanotype.