They : I
I violet their
tongue / heart
a swollen bruise, grew
up in my cold
I in my they
ask myself, will I let
drip each their
until I am so many wings,
I fluttering my theys down
trans · it
I was taught the miracle of how Christ trans ·
forms his body, over and over
in another’s mouth,
so for twenty-one years I held my breast on my tongue, praying for trans ·
substantiation, revelation of the truth of my being beyond the flesh
I trans · mogrify into a soft-bellied
bird, warbling miles of trans · lucent song.
All pilgrimage is trans ·
position of the throat and hands
palming prayers into the crooks of an unfamiliar
coastline, trans ·
feral
thrumming in
my chest like dancing,
the word
itself is a trans · gression
syllables moving the tongue
as flickering
wind
ferrying my song to
the shore of
a stranger’s mouth.
Etymologizing
It began in the mouth
there were only so many
sounds to make and so we shared
tongues amongst each other.
It began as Mohn, a slip of the tongue made
the flower unfurl into Mond
then we saw how the moon fit perfectly
between the swell of parted lips
and it became
Mund—
poppy moon planted in the mouth like incantation, cradling
ancient syllable we coax
symbols to unravel their roots so we may
begin etymologizing ourselves new.
I began as a moon
that never bloomed, never
saw the ways my crescents could be
mouths, meadows.
KLEIN VOORHEES is a poet, artist, and translator from North Carolina. They studied creative writing at California College of the Arts where they received their MFA. They were selected as a fellow for the 2023 Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference. Their work has been featured or is forthcoming in The Arkansas International, the Los Angeles Review, The Offing, and St. Mary’s anthology: “Odes to Our Undoing: Writers Reflecting on Crisis.”