Tongues | Issue 17

Philately

Paul Hostovsky

sounds
vaguely
sexual,
like
fellatio—
it’s the l’s,
the liquids,
the licking
of stamps,
lovers
of stamps—
from the
Greek,
phil,
which is
“love”
combined with
ateleia,
which is
“tax collection”—
which isn’t
very sexy,
but stamp
collectors
every-
where
took a fancy
to it
and it
stuck.

1

Arching for Ghosts

Shnayjaah Jeanty

The texts are from 2022.
I scroll through them like porn–
Not the new kind with good
Lighting and slow eye contact,
But the kind you find on page 27 of a forum called
Something like rawconfessions2
Where someone who looks a little like you
Is begging someone who doesn’t anymore to say it again.
Tell me you love me. No, like how you used to.

I study our old banter like positions.
Try to hit the same arch, make her
Come
Back.
I turn my brightness all the way down
Like it’s something dirty even though I live alone
Even though she hasn’t texted me in six days
And this is the eighth time this week
I’ve re-read the one where she said
You’re my favorite notification.
I screenshot it like I’m planning to leak it,
Like longing is an Onlyfans subscription
And memory is paywalled.

I cannot be the girl she loved at 18.
She was good at pretending sex
Was forever.
Now I’ve learned how to finish alone,
Quietly,
In the middle
Of a memory no one else remembers.

2

The Boiler at Pentecost

Natalie Harveld

The heater rattled louder than the Holy Ghost
that Sunday in March
when frost still gripped the churchyard grass
and the hymn numbers slid crookedly
behind scratched perspex.

The building smelled of damp coats
and radiator dust.
Red carpet worn to thread
down the aisle where Mrs Evans
always prayed in italics.

I was seven
and certain that when they said
tongues of fire
they meant actual flame
that would arrive like weather,
licking the varnish from the pews,
setting alight the laminated notice
about the bring-and-share supper.

Instead there was the shudder of the boiler,
a cough in the pipes,
and then the other sounds began:
syllables unhooked from grammar,
vowels rebooting,
consonants buffering mid-air
like a live stream losing signal.

The adults lifted their hands
as though trying to improve reception.

I waited for ignition.
For smoke.
For the rafters to crack open
and a bright software update
to install itself in our chests.

Nothing burned.

Outside, a tractor passed
with its steady diesel sermon.
Inside, the heater kept up its percussion,
a metallic glossolalia
more convincing than ours.

Years later I would learn
that fear can mimic faith,
volume performs belief,
and noise fills the gap where doubt flickers.

But that morning,
in the pause between outbreaks of sound,
when even the boiler surrendered
to a brief mechanical mercy,
a stillness settled
like ash without flame.

It rested there,
on pew backs, on hymn books,
in the small cage of my ribs
and smouldered.

3

These Are Surreal Days

Michael Frachioni

Early morning, and
I, a Dadaist,
stand
on my head
in the empty bathtub
waiting for inspiration

naked except for
battered hiking boots
on my feet,
their long, untied
laces
dangling,
tickling my shins.

Hugo Ball
whispers to me:
“It is time again for us
in all this chaos – no
room for art but
Anti-art.”

He wanted
to draw a
presidential portrait
but found,
opening his box of pastels,
he was out of ochre.

He retreated to bed,
converted to Catholicism
and died.

I carefully right myself, and
warily walk outside
into the lemon-yellow sun,
laces softly slithering
behind me,
snakes with no bite.

4

Second Autumn

Vivian Walman-Randall

I don’t call my grandmother enough.
She doesn’t believe in climate change.

In early October,
New York burns.

I sweat in the smoke
While picking apples.

Her MRI comes back with pockets of snow
in her lungs, her liver, and her lymph.

The shame of distance nips like fire at the end of a match.
When I call her, we talk about Christmas trees.

Then she tells me her geraniums
withered and died,

Like when we let our grass die in the yard
during the first drought,

before the December fires burned
the mountains between our two homes.

She’s sure this second diagnosis
Is a result of the overtreatment of her first.

Her hair is longer than it’s been
since she had her last round of radiation
10 years ago,

and she’s closer to death
than ever.

5

the different ways to describe queer terror.

Tyler Austin

fearing i'll swallow a tongue when we kiss.
never feeling full.
an absence doesn't even leave a mark.
which one are they again.
i'm open hbu.
running out of needles on the SHL test kits.
looking around in the club.
thinking maybe some drug will make it align.
jockstrap instagram thirst traps.
trembling.
reaching out and they flinch.
trembling.
having a crush you can't afford to fall for.
worrying everything not said is true.
hung top hiding in the corner of the closet.
PDA between two demon twinks.
laying flat on the underground station floor.
the pain in my arms isn't ever going to go.
waiting rooms.
results.
feeling a star-sign chart reading will fix me.
no but REALLY looking.
insufficient funds.
oh wait i'm sorry you thought....i'm not.
reduce.
PDA from a three-quarter zip finance bro.
reuse.
the pile of clothes in the corner.
recycle.
finsta following.
notes app leakage.
worrying everything isn't true.
walking between carriages screaming.
platitudes.
small town taps.
redownloading reuploading redeleting.
tiktok tarot card content.
worrying how many dates you can fit in a day.
PrEP appointment pushed back.
my heart is in my mouth and in yours too.

6

the milkman’s daughter (a pantoum)

Paris Rosemont

synthetic buffalo blades etch grass-weave // onto the underside of iced // latte thighs
chatter of rainbow lorikeets // and the pantomime of voices // in my head
pretty dolls get happy endings // ransom demands thicken // the plot like a good roux
persimmons fall // splatter // split // like fat jellied tongues // licking the pavement

chatter of rainbow lorikeets // and the pantomime of voices // in my head
tetris of crates // sour slop of old milk // insulated morgue for the undrunk
persimmons fall // splatter // split // like fat jellied tongues // licking the pavement
riding shotgun with a foreign trucker // seat jiggly as a carnival ride // future in motion

tetris of crates // sour slop of old milk // insulated morgue for the undrunk
i stopped // looking up to him // he’s not a bad man // just a cold ’un
riding shotgun with a foreign trucker // seat jiggly as a carnival ride // future in motion
childhood shaken // pauls honey & malt chugged // straight outta the carton

i stopped // looking up to him // he’s not a bad man // just a cold ’un
pretty dolls get happy endings // ransom demands thicken // the plot like a good roux
childhood shaken // pauls honey & malt chugged // straight outta the carton
synthetic buffalo blades etch grass-weave // onto the underside of iced // latte thighs

7

Terminal Relationships

Lancee Whetman

The music of churango lullabies. Eye-mask unabashedness. It’s the Super Bowl of split ends. 10 offshoots of a strand. Sprinter-van copilot. Layer sounds until they loop around causality. Extract my tongue from my mouth for choked expression. Am I something that gets expansion? Can we wear Western Columbine? Elevate our buzz with lavender cider? To make this palpable, call this intersection. Not end point. Drunk on my ass, but I saw both sugar and cigarettes there on the bathroom floor. Deadly sweet to be inebriated. I bought an unlimited car-wash pass because I do my best thinking alone in the loud quiet, cloaked in rainbow soap, whipped by hundreds of fiber cloth.

8

Summer, Still

Sophia DuRose

I remember
finding out that paint can liver
in a book about chemistry, which is
really a book about survival
my first attempt at making pickles
fingertips vinegar-ed
dill perfuming and performing vital promise
to cover cadaver nightmares
the first boy to hold my hand in a movie theatre
the first girl who told me I was good at giving head but
only in the dark
North Dakota, watching
hundreds of turkeys cross the road
learning to play chess next to a giant fish tank
illegal pufferfish glugging, swelling, smiling at me
gymnastics competitions in Clearwater, Daytona,
Sarasota, Tampa, Disney World
accelerating off the vault and knowing my fear of planes
had nothing to do with heights
everything to do with where I would eventually land
far from my mother and into
the recesses of repressed fathering
reading Chelsea Girls for the first time
the loneliest summer of my life
a heat wave in San Francisco, spicy noodles to draw out
sweat and pepper-
spraying a man who came on my shoes
somewhere in the tenderloin
asking women for answers
women binding my bleeding curiosity
the front desk of MD Anderson Hospital
getting lost in the white hallways and tripping
over a child’s red slippers
a student telling me that his father had a recording
of my car accident from the night of August 21st
careening off the corner where the rotting church
judged gravel bodies and gravel whim
lying often as a child
the oak tree in my backyard
my stepfather and my tightrope
waking up from anesthesia with my legs flopped open
cool air tonguing the void between them
a male doctor telling me how full of goodies I used to be
sitting on a fire anthill in the fourth grade
scorching pain of ass welts
my roommate’s mother calling my apartment disgusting
New York with a much older man
losing nothing vital on a desk in the middle of the Catskill mountains
a boy I called X and still text every November
the bar where I fell in love
sticky decor and floppy french fries
losing memories in the din of losing men
the first time I worried about faulting the language I love so much
a cold classroom where my professor
told me I should never become a lawyer
tapping my first keg
slipping into madness.

I don’t remember slipping out of madness.
I don’t remember a single kind word my uncle ever said to me.
I worry every book in the world will suddenly become blank.
I worry no one will care.
I know you are reading this and perhaps remembering
your own pickles and anthills
your own labyrinth of desire

those
slot machines of echo.

9

Root / Two questions

Carlos Fernando

1.

¿Ke mapeki tlahuaki tlen machilli pan mayolo? or
what did you feel during the drought?
Thirst,
of course, at first; as my every inch
conformed into a variety of numbness
that resembled being hit by sudden realization
of fact
or an unexpected punch.

Then, quickly,
I felt the unmeasurable collapsing
into a point that nested in my mouth; I felt
alone
and the evidence of it
lasted a long time.

2.

¿Tlein quitōa moyolo? or
what does your heart say? or what am I
to myself
if not the succinct effort
of surface, of embodiment
of voice.

At night—as the wanton moon silvered
everything—I nearly forgot what was water.

3.

mizquitl /
Nahuatl for
tree whose
sap is used as ink.

10

Miracles

Tricia Knoll

Whale songs on the ocean road. Great apes pretend.
Cacti and forsythia bloom on time. Ice floats.
Dogs sniff out cancer. Basilisk lizards walk on water.
Old stone cathedrals resonate with silence. Moles sniff in stereo,
each nostril independent from the other. The octopus tastes
through tentacles. Dolphins, orcas, whales, porpoises and albatross
let one half their brain sleep and move on. Tiny hummingbirds
survive. The elephant matriarch remembers the way.

In a small house in a January polar vortex, I am centered
in a malign howl. I search for the word
for the thump of elephant footsteps crossing the savannah.

The old world knew abundance.
Passenger pigeon. Bison. Whooping cranes.
Perhaps cicadas return to remind us of once and what is gone.
I mourn lost languages; the word I need might have been waiting
for me in Osage, Eyak, or Serrano. Someone had a word
for chilled loneliness, lament of winter never passing,
the edge of frozen darkness, silence after the bison disappeared.

11