I have been folding my tongue beneath itself.
Bleaching my language.
Clenching my jaw with shackled teeth
because the moment I open my mouth
uprisings spring from my saliva.

My dialogue is cruddy, trampled with the muddy
boots of trade and migration. Battling nations
in my diaphragm. So the rhythm in my diction
sounds like a war cry and despite the white

stuffed down my windpipe, I talk Black with nappy language—
syllables that kink and twist. Knotty expression
beads under palate. Soul Glo in this spit shine flow,
Jheri Curl jargon, bongo drums in my diction. This slang

is semantic resistance. Off with the head of the King’s English.
Can’t you smell the riot on my breath? Char in my esophagus?
My laugh is arsenic and ain’t enough opiates in this elementary
education to hook me on phonics or gentrify the djembe out of my pronunciation.

Love the taste of this cornbread
accent; sugar cane slang. My tongue is Motherland-
mama of civilization-birth of every nation-scat-boom-bat-
high hat-jazz-sax. There is music in my melanin

and I be talkin’ hella Black. With a neck roll to articulate
my tone. Conversations get you high as my cheekbones.
Lingo ‘bout lush as these hips done grown. Thick
thighs and deep fried vernacular. Hand motions and sound effects.

Hieroglyphics hidden in my messages. My breath
is the building of the pyramids on repeat.
I’m like a Negro Spiritual sampled over a Trap beat
There is a Black anthem inside my belly

So I will lift every voice and speak.