we eat our own tongues
wash off the dirt the villagers flung
coat them in flour ground by our foreign
hands season with kauderwelsch and fry
the fuck out of them
mother plates them garnished
with unspeakable accents
her hair coiffed in the style all the ladies in the village wear
father’s palate thick with a dialect
that cannot be excised
takes out his otherness puts it in a glass on the sill
where it grins at passer-by
this is how we eat: swallowing
the light filtered by the jalousie stripes us all in sun
and shade outside a single peal of the big bronze bell
announces a quarter past normal
the scraping of knives and forks on plates
up and down
the streets echoing like mechanical birdsong
sister pours sips of her blood
into our mouths from a cup made of a gold
so lustrous it makes the future seem impossibly
bright
brother leans back balancing on the hind legs of his chair
stuck
in the moment of falling his mouth open
full of broken
swings stolen from the playground
behind the house where we lived
this is us
mealtimes are holy and we the congregation
knees studded with gravel are learning
how to pray again to mortal gods with dirty hands
with chipped off teeth and accents thick as bunker walls
made of bread
