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BRODY PARRISH CRAIG MAW —for Chuks Maw is a word I don’t understand. In theory, it sounds beautiful & then I remember the origin story of the animal in all of us, not the ones I know now by Machado or my own momentary hunger, but the one from the bible where Jesus came with the flood & a man took the animals two by two—a couplet in the rain storm named after broadcasters like Katrina. I remember the hurricanes more than flood: no name for the boy who stayed, no name for the lack of texts my best friend worried over after. Things get displaced from time to time. And people, like animals, fade away. Some nights, I want to erase my name for myself or the bathroom mirror. Language comes and goes in this claiming, this string of words we cannot say—if I told you that I named myself, would Adam come trickling after, running in a fog of stories I have confused or conflated or haven’t told yet. Listen, what I’m trying to say, is my mouth moves cross pages unproperly. What I’m trying to say is when my mouth shuts, it's landed on a prayer. My tongue moves back and forth sometimes, as I’m medicated properly. A side effect my mother swore to & laughed at me in judgement for. Maybe the flood’s the aftermath. The smell of love after it rains. Or maybe, I’m a white flag dove still hanging on a tree limb—I raise myself to this horizon like a glass waiting for another’s clinking. I’m trying to trust myself again. An instinct, animal, in each of us. I’m trying to find a language cats can read that I can write. Even in translation, my lips curvature is effortless. A body is behind this, and for now, I’m quite alive. |