Michael Bazzett
Tongues
Most people can already speak
hurricane, given that it’s mostly howling
rage and shares numerous
cognates with the mother tongue.
But sunlight
is a quiet dialect
where every word sounds
almost the same to the untuned
eye. It is native
only to the green leaves
that devour it whole.
~
Michael Bazzett’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, Massachusetts Review, The Sun, Oxford Poetry, 32 Poems, and Sixth Finch. His debut collection, You Must Remember This, (Milkweed Editions, 2014) won the Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, and his verse translation of the Mayan creation epic, The Popol Vuh, is forthcoming from Milkweed. Visit him at michaelbazzett.com.
