My larynx is a gramophone, its tone
Is sticky, elastic drone; it heats up
Beats up the box of stomach butterflies so they
Flap and shake, they vibrate like the strings
And chords that sing and take my throat
To wake the panic room behind my tongue,
The needle that had just begun to graze
The record as it spun, but now the point
Is one slide forward one slide back, launching
An attack on words stuck back to back, haulting
As the letter goes vaulting to and fro and it
Curses all the sounds that test and pound the
Blood that crests from my feet to my hips to my chest
To my neck to my cheeks, and the girl who
When she speaks gets stuck for seconds
That stretch and tuck and fold to hours, is
Red like the record breaking in her neck beyond
Her power and the pin has scratched away all
Meaning from the surface leaving awkward space
And hopeless pleading in her brain that hides until
The word will come: In the dark the chord strings
Buzz that the sum of her parts means less than
The terrible art of her dozens of starts, and now
It's been too long, in red hot shame and silence's hum,
It will not come, it will not come.