Amani Jones

Snake Tongue(s)
“Dear sister,
I’m a savage. There is savage-me, inside, wild-thick as sin, so much, my Soul
is clabbered but there is a Change, I sense, inside my curdled mess...”
-Obour Tanner “I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood”

I was born big footed and clumsy to a home of thick hipped women,
tongues loud and brash,
Puertorican.
Pretty language.
It's a pretty language, the Spanish
of my grandma and my great grandmother,
prettier than the Spanish of the Spanish speakers
from Spain. Spaniards lisp around their ‘s’s and it's messy.
It’s Different than that of my mothers,
for she chose to alter her accent with english impositions.
Is she not enough?
Not beautiful enough.
Is there no beauty in the learning of a syllable so different from your own?
I tried to teach myself the words of Joao,
of Astrud,
Tudo bem, Pode ser, Muita calma.
Caught between the sound of the ‘o’ and the ‘u’
Where ‘o’ sounds like ‘u’
as does ‘u’

As do they,
get caught between the culture, where fault is found in
normalcy,
That is not perceived as normal to them.
What is normal?
This brashness in the eyes of the civil,
blonde headed, slim framed, picture of a perfect,
American.
American, American

American?