It

Then I, too, opened my mouth to praise —

But a silence wedged my gullet.
— Ted Hughes

It hung there, stiff, and swayed
much as you’d picture a suicide

  or the moon’s bleak appendix.

Though he grew older and was urged
to ignore it, it was never
removed.
Walking, he matched pace with those
around him.
Shat in a porcelain bowl.
Picked flecks from his teeth.
Plotted the y-axis at a polished desk
but never attempted to name it.

In fevered, summer nights when
the walls of his room sweated, leaning
in under plastic F18 Hornets, he called,

                     Mother …
and stroking his hair she whispered,
Homo sapien,
it’s all I can do …

Forced out of his home
he was given ID cards, licences,
given queer looks at his silent,
dusty mouth.
All the while
it hung there and swayed, its shadow
licking his ear as he slept.
He went brittle and ached.
And when it swelled to an unbearable
weight and the sun was a perpetual

gavel banging at the drawn skin
of his temples, he coaxed it down
into a pit, where he lay for
a long time, apologizing.