after Jesper Svenbro ‘A Critique of Pure Representation’ and ‘Material for a Geological Theory of Language’




Immersed in speech before you knew

tongue. Ear to your own cry’s

primary exhalation. That tiny cave of bone. 
Its tympani formed during your first

swim, tethered to tissue inside her pelvic

cage – osseous cells. Honeycomb. Rigid. 
Porous. Surprisingly mobile. Expanding

to grasp you and let you go – slow as

your need, all being well. What 
ancient stone-carved god imagined this

contraction and departure into world’s

genealogy of flesh? The toes stubbed
on the mineral throb of becoming. You

with your toothless voice a younger

sibling of mountains and their caverns
cool with percolated lime. Wind-

shaped miracles of gravity. Their eons

echo in the barest bones of things