Laura McCullough Blaze I want to kiss the mouth of another language, feel the small muscles electric and tingling around their vowels, the consonants swallowed, the silences like small maps of a small engine that rests on both of our lips. Chomsky said language is too difficult to deduce by attention to repetitions, but I will repeat this exercise until your tongue feels like my own and the spittle of assumption collects in the pit of my mind. Your reason isn't all I care for; when you speak, the air is shaped into momentary volcanoes, the ash drifting into my eyes, blinding me, so I can finally see vowels that float in the air like ash, like snow, searing and momentarily illuminated.

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