Research: Journals
The Journal
Issue 33.1
Lesley Wheeler
Her Voice in My MouthThere's a noise for grief I can't say or spell.
Her accent dispersed like the odor
of boiled cabbage: never quite.
For years she pronounced the a
in mall with the sound in candle,
flat as a pool of wax, while tomato
and banana melted into long sighs.
Continents of misapprehension.
The vowels have quietly relocated,
whole phrases in consonantal drift.
She never steps into a Pennsylvania
July and says, The sun's cracking the flags.
My greasy maulers and gravel rash
have cleared up now. I feel them only
like phantom limbs, like tea going cold
while I talk on the phone. The room
of my mouth remains full of ghosts.
Something is almost gone, a fume
of sound and all that it meant.
Lesley Wheeler, English, Washington & Lee Univ., Lexington VA 24450
wheelerlm@wlu.edu
