Once by drowning, once by hanging, once
by inhaling carbon monoxide, three
attempts before I was thirty, all
failures. All because of a tangled
tongue. And a father who beat me
for the filthy habit, calling it akin
to masturbation. The summer I pretended
to be deaf and dumb. The quack cures,
cruel experiments, needles in the mouth,
psychotropic drugs. Singing. The ordeal
of going to the corner store for Dill's
pipe cleaner. Of walking out without.
Aspirations zero, until I hitched a ride
with a farmer who said don't labor so hard,
just stutter better, let the syllables
leak out. I might have been St. Paul
on the road to Damascus. Soon a man
appeared in spotless attire making odious
sounds. Took him to a calving. Up
to his shoulder in the bloody muck.
Made him extract the afterbirth, dump it
in a bucket. The man turned sloppier,
the stutter, cleaner. Every case
a metaphor to deconstruct, unleashing
the unsayable, the choked back flood.
by Barbara Goldberg