ma, because I was born without a tongue,
the first white boy to taste the hollow of my mouth
calls it an empty river. a canyon of dirt.
our mouths are ravines. recorded massacres.
stripped of sockeye. of albacore. of the slitted bodies
of sardines. everything we consume is dead.
I have built my new tongue from old corpses.

ma, this seems simple to admit. loosening our jaws,
sliding our ribs against a plastic slab made
to look like oak, every devastation of bone softens
the burden of the empty plate. we are full
only in death. when I gnaw at flesh,
I gather every flake of meat beneath my tongue
and think I am killing less.

ma, to swallow is to deny every war crime we ravage
against ocean at this dinner table.
this table left by the white man who owned it before us,
who left with a stomach full,
teeth browned. to the boy with pink lips and white flesh,
this means teeth dirtied. to me, too.

ma, the man left a wharf of cigarettes.
nicotine-stained sea spills between our fingers.
the boy knows already: the waters are barren.
the daughter hungers. I hunger. I, hunger.
I hunger for more than what is mine.
I, hunger stripping flesh of trout
and leaving graveyard in my wake.

ma, his people swallowed nations like this. sucked at the bone
until there were only hollows. a fingertip of blood
dried gently. a pinch of cumin marking their chins.
the smudge glistens, softens into a bullet hole.
I have a dream in which the boy empties a cartridge
into my waiting abdomen.
the dream ends in watching myself bleed.
the bullet fills my empty belly, spews life over his empty plate,
and paints it red like the torn stomach of a nation lost.

ma, we are small enough to be left behind. in cartoons,
the vultures swoop down to swallow forgotten corpses.
in life, we lower our necks at lunch tables
and these curves form a hanging mouth. we eat
tuna from the can. it is soft and gray as pavement,
forgotten before it meets our tongues.
I wonder if the boy can remember my mouth,
how it tastes of an ocean.
how, gathered in another mouth, it could tell you my sins.

ma, maybe this is why they sent the bombs: enough carnage
leaves only a landfill. kill until it is wrong
to waste the barrage of corpses. we bury the fish
beneath our tongues. the flesh disguises flesh.
in the moments before necrosis, there are only heroes
begging to be called ocean. to be called water.
to bring back everything that has been lost,
we soften their massacre into the echo of our own survival.

when we leave slivers of cod on the bones, vultures swarm
again. swallow our relenting eyes. arms.
call us prey. gentle. in voiceless prayer, we crane our throats
into mouths again. open.
for another mouth. for another ocean. tell me if, this time,
we will drown. we, carcasses eager.
we, carcasses waiting to consume.