Wild Tongue

By Rebecca Seiferle

                                             the Platonic idea
      is “not only beauty, truth, and goodness,” but “the heavenly
             bed, created by God … a heavenly man, a heavenly
                             dog, a heavenly cat, and so on …”
                                             Bertrand Russell

               We’re not all lesbians at this bar and grill (not yet?
        not practicing? only in heart?), chiaroscuro as the room is
                 with expensive ambiance and dear cuts of meat
             and fish overlaid with nouveau fruit sauce, it’s clear
                   that the most manly woman among us, older,
                    wearing cowboy boots and a turquoise bolo,
                  is probably neither entirely straight nor wholly
                 queer. When she begins to confess her ‘secret’—
                        it’s her holding of a piece of land, acres
                    of sweet desert; its muddy roads, its remote
                 sublime have four-wheeled deep into her being.
                She’s probably someone’s heavenly grandmother,
                     as I’m still someone’s heavenly wife, despite
                 the separation. Appearance does not really appear,
               but it appears to appear, yet, for a moment, it seems
                    our conversation may open up unexpectedly
                      or shatter into awkwardness over the word
                         girlfriends: who in the rainy summers
                of our youths, we all played with our girlfriends,
                    (what do I mean by ‘girlfriend?’ what do you
             mean by yours?) It’s only then, as one of the younger
                 women (the most lovely, so silver with bracelets
                       and earrings and a noticeable ring) laughs
                that I begin to guess her inclination, Does it really
                    appear to appear, or only apparently appear
               to appear? It’s a long way from Plato’s symposium
            to this bar and grill in Arizona. At that ancient feast—
        whenever a number of individuals have a common name,
                  they have also a common ‘idea’ or ‘form’—only
           men reclined upon the couches, and the only the love
                    of man for man was love’s ideal, the impulse
               toward some boyish form becoming the ascension
                  of being to some ever truer realm, as the souls
                      of men became pregnant and gave birth to
                     “not only beauty, truth, and goodness,” but
           “the heavenly bed, created by God… a heavenly man,
               a heavenly dog, a heavenly cat, and so on through
         a whole Noah’s ark,” but no heavenly woman, much less
             a heavenly lesbian, for since Aristotle, “Lesbian rule”
         has meant that measure made of lead so it could be bent
          to a curved or crooked wall. Because we are all women,
            how can we speak of love? In the beginning, banished
         from the realm of discourse, assigned to love’s servitude
                  not its speech, to be love’s body not its tongue,
            so no one here speaks of her feeling, much less thinks
        to make it another’s measure. In our mouths, the tongue’s
               a knife, each word a wild edge, where we stammer
                   only our own wound, a drop of blood sensual
                   on the tongue, a distinctive taste of salt, more
               mollusk perhaps—wrapped around an I of sand—
                    than pearl, a syllable of milk or nipple, some
                    private body within the body, the you behind
              your eyes, as if being itself were poetry—passionate
            with nascent and protean neologism, full of the gaps
             of being, the oblique richness of a depth in which we
                begin to glimpse each other, mysterious and solo
                       as we are, black stubborn pearls of being.
                    If we spoke of Plato, and we don’t; each of us
                         was banished from the womb by virtue
                   of having a womb, to this unpredictable realm
                        where each of us would have to discover
                    her self, that wild tongue—never delineated,
               even in shadow, upon the philosopher’s cave wall.
 

Copyright Credit: Rebecca Seiferle, "Wild Tongue" from Wild Tongue.  Copyright © 2007 by Rebecca Seiferle.  Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Source: Wild Tongue (Copper Canyon Press, 2007)