Tommye Blount

in my mouth is as fat as a cow’s tongue, still I want to ask the woman at the next table what she’s saying into her phone. A tongue, a cow’s tongue tastes like the rest of the cow.Cow tastes like cow, an aunt once said in an accent as sweet as Arkansas dirt. Someone, in English, told me I don’t carry my vowels like anyone they know. I’ve tried, but my tongue won’t move like my aunt’s nor like anyone else’s in my family. I ain’t makin’ sense, they’d say if they were me. Why don’t I talk like us anymore? Anyway...Every other word, the woman slips into English. The way a train window trades a dead city for a dead suburb; a posh row for a cow pasture.Duct cleaning, Thai Bistro,

lands on my pretty man’s forearm. Harmless, it isn’t deadly at all; makes his muscle flutter — the one that gets his hand to hold mine, or ball into a fist, or handle a gun. It’s a ladybug, or an Asian lady beetle everyone mistakes for a ladybug — eating whatever it lands on. My pretty man is asleep — at ease, or plotting like the bug. Or maybe the bug is a blowfly — eating my pretty man’s tan from his pretty arm. My man swats it without waking, as if he’s dreaming of an enemy, or me. When my pretty man isn’t asleep he’s got a temper. No, he is not asleep. He’s wide awake and wants me to tell you I’m wrong. Blowflies don’t eat skin, they lay eggs on skin. He knows all about blowfly larvae. Napoleon used them to clean war wounds, my cold pretty man says in that pretty way, with his cold pretty mouth. He’s eaten plenty of bugs before. On night watch, over there. Over there, they’re everywhere.