... just left her alone. In college biology class, she once researched a parasite that infects fish by infiltrating the gills, eating out the host’s tongue, and taking a spot there instead. Cymothoa exigua are bullies, consuming everything from that muscular seat of pain, gathering up voice and sound...

....” The injurious loss of the mother tongue—the structural impossibility of intergenerational feminine care—organizes the story and situates the reader in a state of mourning. Indeed, it is affect more than fact that characterizes Morrison’s narration of historical events and is the site of her greatest literary...

...Ariana Vigil Abstract Relying on feminist theory concerning difference, identity, gender, and solidarity, “Transnational Community in Demetria Martínez's Mother Tongue ” reads Martínez's 1994 novel through a transnational feminist lens. I point out that Mother Tongue complicates identification...

...Leigh Johnson Abstract This article argues that, as a tool for social justice and resistance, the concept of motherwork can be usefully applied to two texts by Chicana writers—Lucha Corpi's Black Widow's Wardrobe and Demetria Martínez's Mother Tongue . The essay draws on Patricia Hill Collins's...

... flew away, I was still learning my first language, my psalms of paalam, which is to say my mother tongue is absence, is classifying beautiful birds in flight, is fibrous diaspore that the wind lifts into myth next, it was my turn to fly, to find her, in the cold gray of San Francisco Bay...

... and the Bic you need is green and ifit appears beneath the mattress of your couch but the couch is dirty and you suddenly want to clean beneath the pillows but you have no vacuum and the vacuum is in the store and your pocket has no money it is not your pen you are looking for it is your tongue and those who...

... of Japanese rule is further exacerbated by the mother’s insertion into colonial language—a process that violently roots itself in the body. She continues, in her address to her mother: “[Y]ou speak the tongue the mandatory language like the others. It is not your own. . . . The tongue that is forbidden...

... as a result of Japanese rule is further exacerbated by the mother's insertion into colonial language-a process that violently roots itselfin the body. She continues, in her address to her mother: "[Y]ou speak the tongue the mandatory language like the others. It is not your own The tongue that is forbidden...

... A mouthful of continents                 consonants                              and not enough vowels Too many syllables for your tongue to untangle                 The rhythm                               The order The rhyme of my true name The name imprinted on my heart...

... subjects have to pass. 2 In so doing, we must give up something of ourselves: an accent or fluency in a native tongue, a deeper shade, perhaps a connection to a place left, developed, or abandoned, maybe food or clothes or dance or prayers or ways ofloving or living or sitting in sacred circles...

... the creases of your grandmother tongue, 34 MERIDIANS 11:1 longing for sound to fall and scatter like muses chanting histories into place your lips quiver, mouth slowly opens- "Come here nab gal! Let me feel yuh tongue." NOTES r. "Haibun: Updated Transcript of Letter Dated 1764" The quote in the first...

... black boys, it's a crap(s) game. Fools rush in love coaxes the boy-daddy to slang in the wee hours to try to by buy me. On the bus, 180 MERIDIANS 8:2 I can't escape him even as my teeth tear his skin. Pressed, he slammed me against the kitchen door for refusing a tongue kiss, I see him eight years...

... the pieces of her migrant life and my m other tongue (Gordon 1997 ). I think about her ghosts as a gathering place, where I sit with these undesirable memories rather than move or rush beyond them. Without, I hope, “committing further violence in my own act of narration” (Hartman 2008b , 2), I tell...

... the curve after sines, the nerves after coherence. my wild thing is gone as if a country could be so molded, molten, underneath my tongue my lover, when you were allowed: my dear, you are bilingual my feet, filthy with their stage genderqueer in bad grammar my architecture...

...Michelle Smith Copyright © 2002 by Wesleyan University Press 2002 CLAUDIA RANKINE MichelleSmith she spoke carefully her tongue handling the words like glass setting them down softly as one puts a baby to bed I listened for the island in her inflection the stilted bounce of a jerk patois...

.... Gross, Colored Amazons The LoveSong of Alice Clifton vexed with wickedness, lies as promises, this Philadelphia-no love or joys, just ravens caged warning black mistresses. Schaffer pale as high cherubim and coy. with pleas for liberty twisted in his tongue, said he would unbind me. loose, as his wife...

...Lorelei Williams Copyright © 2001 by Wesleyan University Press 2001 WHY I AM AFRAID LoreleWi illiams Because I will not bleed again Because I remember too much Because this tattoo stings Because he will never be man enough Because I love him anyway Because there's another cunt on his tongue...

... tongue in the palm there it is NEW WORLD BABYLON REMIX 67 ~ ~~ fr: flUp ~ HA 1 T 1 AND THE DO:MlNlCAN REPUBLIC ...

...Marilyn Chin Copyright © 2002 by Wesleyan University Press 2002 BOLD BEAUTY MarilynChin She opened her eyes and he was already within her. Though the lore said that a mere kiss would suffice. The song distorted on the tongue of the soothsayerno need to struggle, he would take her away on his...

... to the fiery Chicanitas who ask, Why do you take her used things, Mama? Originally published in Meridians vol. 9, no. 1, 2009. A revised version of this poem was subsequently published in Guerrero’s chapbook A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying (2013). ...