my tongue twists English

into a tight knot in the auditory cortex & my fingers

curl      it into a nest of matted letters              my identity     

my speech        hardly decipherable      my beliefs

smothered in suspicion & self-doubt     my adopted language

my writing     silent & cursive           curdling & cursing

& intoning cuss words like prayers       the incense stick

in the censer       the smoke spiraling into cryptic scripts

i think              i dream vernacular       & then translate

high-speed     frame by frame            word by word   

grammar & spell checks      insertions & deletions

they mock       the progenitors             they correct

my concepts    my phrases       i decode           i interpret

a mutation in the sequence      style & structure    a recombination         

traits that differ    from my progenitors     & i am who

is ostracized        who is not seen as one-of-our-own

i am mutant        an error caused in the interpretation

of a primeval vocabulary        the pig reared in a sanctuary

to generate organs & corpses               for a market

which buys                   in a foreign land     i write

bad      i talk worse      i am caught in limbo    

between my goals and my status quo   an apparition alive      

attempting to land in heaven               with a mortal body & soul

caught in a nowhere world                   in a word vacuum 

my languages   my identity       crossbred & crossed