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Volume 2 Number 2 • Fall - Winter 2010-2011
We are born thieves—as babes
we crack the combination
on the vault of language,
steal from our parents' lips
the gems that will deliver us
from the antics of our poverty.
We listen for the turn of phrase, the click
the round sound of opening—
bolted doors blasted with one word
and soon we are able to untie
the cloth bag of the throat, spill
diamond and ruby syllables
across the kitchen table.
Pawned on the tip of the tongue,
for the gold ring of vocabulary,
the new car of syntax, the big house
on Main street, in the city of speech
black leather gloves always at hand
to rifle through the drawers
pry a metaphor from its setting, jimmy
the lock on a beating heart.
Marjorie Bruhmuller lives on a farm in Quebec. Her poems have appeared in Grain, Event, Room, The Antigonish Review, The Poetry Project (Tupelo Press), THEMA, The Cold River Review, Taproot IV, California Quarterly, Willow Review, The Light in Ordinary Things (Fearless Books), The New Writer (UK) and The Centrifugal Eye. One poem just won third prize in FreeFall's Prose and Poetry Contest 2009.