2 Poems by Krystal Languell
from 56 Etymologies
(4)
A process occurs when you give up your language and start calling things by new names but there is not a term for how new phrases infiltrate your reflex it starts with the gutturals and when you try to give it up try to back out the primal language dialects but you will understand shouts of surprise from the last place to wipe clean.
What You Would Have Me Believe
Touch at breakfast, you tragic hero. You scoundrel. Unclasp rotten hearts
without looking so we can wake up clean. We must stay relevant.
Connect tongue to number—lick this math to seal, to create vacuum—this
will dissolve on contact; like an asymptote, we get closer but never touch.
Other things that dissolve: candy buttons. Peel from backing like receipt
tape, eat paper because it is sugar like numbers, like buttons taste.
Krystal Languell is currently completing her MFA at New Mexico State University where she is the assistant poetry editor for Puerto del Sol. Her work has appeared in Eleven Eleven, DIAGRAM, Prick of the Spindle and elsewhere. She was born in Indiana.
I found you!