This is not my tongue,

or my mother’s, or of my land.

Law, however, says it is. A tongue
shoved into our mouths,

a clear violence

of our body, of a people heavily oral,

a clear violence

disguised as benevolence,

as liberatory pleasure. A tongue
from across the Pacific

that forced its way into

our mouths for nearly half a century⁠—

half a century too long that it

still licks our lips some 75 years

after its supposed withdrawal. A tongue
whose buds still dictate

our palate,

whose muscles still slur

our speech,

whose clacks still whip

our laws,

whose sputum still smudges

our identity. A tongue
that I wish for us to cut

with our unsheathed own,

so that we may finally

taste and speak.