Featured Poem

Etymology

God knows nothing we don’t know.
We gave him every word he ever said.
- Stephen Dunn

This is one way to trace history — a child
breathes a word into her cupped hand,
her palm trained to feel the pulse
of each consonant and vowel before she
spells into the microphone.

And this is the dictionary
she’s studied: a yellowed volume,
broken spine, every word from a
(the Phoenician aleph, the Greek
alpha, the Roman A) to zymurgy, meaning
fermentation, dripping with wine at the end

of such a long book, such a long day, a vintage
red to be had when she’s old enough to know
there is nothing she will ever memorize
that cannot be forgotten and rarely can the busy-
bee of work keep that blackbird of age
from plucking the most precious letters

from her, the siphoning of the soul
we all feel half-deflated on the couch,
glass in hand, a flashing memory of the cheering
crowd when once you got it right, how easy
to be loved when you’re a child, how easy
it was to be good, everyone wants a kitten,
but a cat? Now spelling comes hard, unpracticed,

everything spellchecked
except this sentence you’re composing, the one
question you want to ask, but knowing
no word ever came out of that ancient desert
changes Time, your prayer
goes something like this — tumeric, league,
moon-calf, pear, balm. Sea-sick sway,
orthodontics, vacuum, shunt, raven, queer,
queer, you’re nothing but a queer. A hurricane,
Lord, and Sappic and bulldyke and cold cream
too. Red apron, red apple, aureole. A tangle

of sound. Oh, crowded closet, sweet mother, sweet
mother of Adam, answer me this: why?

© Nickole Brown
From Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality