Two Poems

Save for Slovakia,                                             the word for language
changes at each                                                          adjacent border.
A dialect,              a dilatation.
A detection of proper pronunciation.
                                                                   Slovo        slow-
                                                                                                 dripping.
                                                  We call this accumulation of sounds
vocabulary. We call it slovník,             shoulder it in our throats.
Is speech sea or shore,                                 safe
                house or turbulence?                          Sounds rehearsed
                       and scattered on the horizon. Vertical, the verse,
the curse                                                     of continuous perimeter.
Is there an invisible
                                    threshold
                                                                       at which you must find
a new word             for thirst?
Moře nebo pobřeží,     these lines               that draw a country’s
                                                                                         confines?
Language freckles the landscape,
                                                             bright          and         bleached
in     sun,     in     sonic,    in    eleven    million    speakers,
native                                       and                                       navigating.

for Pražský Orloj: Prague Astronomical Clock

Each    brick    a    tongue    click
in the orchestra of construction,

each  mantel  a diphthong  made
malleable.   Language,    circular

                       as a low alto vowel.

Three  rings of  golden  symbols
orbit gilded lips. The sun on the

second  hand eclipses  the moon
ticking on the cusp of a sapphire

sphere. All this vocabulary made
circular  and  ornate  just  to say:

it will all cease soon.

Everyone already knows the end
to the only story time can  share.

Nemluvím,     Nemluvím    rings
in   the  mouth,  as  it  continues

to   spin   with    glinted    gleam.