Voice Lesson

1.
I heard the teacher tell you—
Vowels are the sounds that sing.
Consonants can’t.
When you click lips closed,
your tongue and teeth 
cut sounds into chunks—
A-E-I-O-U open into song—
long tones in the throat.
Lungs push a shout 
into your mouth
and out into the air
to take flight.
Consonants cannot cry.

2.
At your birth,
I opened my throat,
and sound
loosened my womb.
The tune of the body,
something known
before words,
resonated in my mouth—
not the brain, sharing sensation
not sense, nor nonsense—
an ancient, certain groan. 

3.
Last night we made lungs
out of pink bubble wrap.
Inside each flapping lobe
you drew blue-branched
veins and vined arteries,
taped trachea and diaphragm.
You say you want to change 
your voice—make it consonant
with the sound you hear inside—
low, not soprano.

Whose song is it? 
Not mine to conduct,
no more, no more, no more—
Almost grown.
You own your voice.
I cover my mouth.
Click closed my dissonant
response. I listen
beneath the tune. 

The Artist’s Way

It’s like having an extra soul, she says.
I say it’s an extra gut
that insists on being fed,
an extra arm that won’t fit in any sweater
but slaps enemies flat.
A third eye that turns wood-grained walls to lace,
an extra ear that hears rhymes slant or spare,
chamber of conveyance and refuge,
an extra breast that leaks champagne,
umbilical cord tethered to the sky.
Self, born from something other
than fleshy mother—
a ravenous tongue
tasting desire 
and erasure.