I stand before a pitch of hillside, evening
bled dark, a pathway of insideness
swarming from that belly
of mountain, it is a soccer team
emerging, crowd shouting
and the Spanish lesson emphasizes
the pronunciation of jugadores.
Not like doors, the mouth too round:
ladders and dogs will get there –
Something you thump your tongue against,
something that sits against your teeth and rolls
to your throat –
the shape of the tongue is a monster
of sharpness that must prick at the roof
where there are no windows. Only widows,

which my son tried to understand yesterday,
confusing divorce with death but sensing
that the consequence is to be alone
and we veered
to what comes next. Heaven— who told him that?—or
maybe you, living, remarry, or live alone in shade
under apple trees with a German Shepherd
thirty minutes from downtown. Rosemary swaying
in clumps, heavy with soon flowers. The end

of the line is the track I’m standing on,
the start of sheer hillside, the purgatory
where a shoe drops. All the clatter from the back
of the throat comes garbled and wailing forward
but in elation like an alegrías,
the solo dance of princess airs, fighting for the best
of the dying light, mellifluous
tongue tricks clacking up the slope,
and no one even watches, no one believes the voice
itself can change from country to country like this.

– Emma Ferguson