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English Flavors
I love to lick English
the way I licked the hard
round licorice sticks the Belgian nuns gave me for six
good conduct points on Sundays after mass.
Love it when ‘plethora’,
‘indolence’, ‘damask’,
or my new word: ‘lasciviousness,’ stain my tongue,
thicken my saliva, sweet as those sticks — black
and slick with every lick it
took to make daggers
out of them: sticky spikes I brandished straight up
to the ebony crucifix in the dorm, with the pride
of a child more often punished
than praised.
‘Amuck,’
‘awkward,’ or ‘knuckles,’ have jaw-
breaker flavors; there's honey in ‘hunter’s moon,’
hot pepper in ‘hunk,’ and ‘mellifluous’
has aromas
of almonds and milk . Those tastes of recompense
still bitter-sweet today as I roll, bend and shape
English in my mouth, repeating
its syllables
like acts of contrition, then sticking out my new tongue —
flavored and sharp — to the ambiguities of meaning.
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Copyright © by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
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