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TONGUE AND OTHER
FORMS OF TASTE
Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi
I move my tongue in my mouth
and make the noise of silence—
click its base like heels,
like someone who's perfected escape.
But there are no windows,
and the world is a very vast place.
A gargoyle of words, my belly full of music.
My chest, a pond of wind.
Every petaled word here
is brought by the hardness of the breeze.
Every feeling was once coughed.
Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi, a black poet, won the Deconflating Surveillance with Safety contest and received commendation at the 2024 HART Prize for Human Rights. He was a finalist in the Hayden's Ferry Review Poetry Prize '23, with work featured or forthcoming in POETRY, Heavy Feather Review, Strange Horizons, and more.
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