Certus Incertus

Isobel Dixon

Noon classroom heat, the rhyme a perfect whole
shaped in her head, the air
as heavy as a drape about her

as she stands, the clever one,
her hands pressed hot against her skirt.
Then dumb-show swallowing

and mime. The rapid fire of cocked-up consonants.
The stretching out of time —
A sentence come unstrung. And no escape.

God wove humility into my tongue,
stitched knots into its root:
words made my stumbling blocks

and snares. Both gift and downfall,
so a syllable could catch me unawares
despite the careful path

I’d laid about the difficult.
Alone, a poem was paradise.
Aloud, an ambuscade.

And still my name is treacherous:
the first an easy swim,
a sibilance, soft labial,

and then warm lateral rest.
A stubborn plosive bars the last,
refusing. The mouth’s tough muscle trapped,

a clumsy toad that’s scarred and furrowed
as if mapped with all its failed assaults,
the long embarrassments

as listeners’ lips chew silently,
rehearsing what they think I mean.
Pace! I’ve better words inside than these —

gladly abandon sound bytes
and embrace the peace of foolscap,
the pleasure of a faintly humming screen.

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