My mother tongue
unrolls along the red dirt plain:
slow, tacky,
unfolding like the dream
that catches everything.

My red mother tongue
unrolls in rows of cotton,
alfalfa, fields of wheat,
and in the green water
of the silty river.

And in the back yard
on a summer’s night, in grass
thick with chiggers,
red ants, stickers.
My slick mother tongue

switches legs for talking ugly,
pitching a fit, throwing a hissy.
My slick red sticky mother tongue
can lick any little pistol,
and keeps the ring-tailed tooters

toeing the line.

From Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems (PEARL Editions, 2004).
Used with the author’s permission.