(slang)uage

talked montclairian growin’ up in jerz: chirp yerp in a dark park,

hear it called back: you good to cyph. whole people dubbed head or mug—

that bougie teen $ynecdoche—chug too much queeze and you’ll boot. here i learn

“college fund” from white folk, then probe home on where mine went. never fully

got our place in the quainter, browner part of town till then.

what luxe liberaltopia,

where kids with two mommies or daddies festooned the terrain.

even had queer friends young. jackson and ethan used to mop coats

from garden state they’d vogue down the streets in.

cat kitty cat-ca-ca-cat meow, ’burb-fag stunts the house down, sis.

codify this fuzzy hunty. we’d ki how gods might way up there,

radiant, skies-far from earthbound mess. the innocence,

the fuckery, none prepared me for the tea of (white-run) gay space,

its paradox-forgery by thieves who can’t see your work or you.

having grasped more i know this for sure: mixed-up rainbow stripes

streak brown as ham’s cursed kin.

witness i, _chievement g_p filler, croon problem-deepening theses

on heuristic, heteroglossic verse, conference floor field holler

set to hyfrydol tune. codify this fuzzy discourse, question

every line of questioning. concoct new insights on hume v.

hobbes in under one pg. my elders know next to nil of this

lexicon, but drop guillén’s “sóngoro cosongo, songo bé” _nd bet

they’ll feel it: lucumí drum sounds pounding in our blood. jstor

won’t give you rhythm. honestly,

qué sabes sobre black talk ’sides aave rules you get from school?

do you really fuck with expressive culture? schoolyard roasts cut

my teeth. if they call you soft save the tears—if they say you got that mushmouth

jaw, ask why they built like chuck e. cheese. o, word!? may-I-speak-

to-the-ma_ager haircuts assume we boutta scrap cuz we yell, or y’all get

spooked, but it’s mostly grade zero serious. mammals stay perplexed

by mammals. some af-am fam be geeked at ceviche type blacks a_d vice

versa, but real talk: the bridge that fixes afro to –(suffix) is a wall

if rotated.

spanish chunks twist en mi mind’s mix—too few sprinkled

to shut latinx snobs up. they call it our native speech. ¡jajaja! our?

yorùbá says hi, and nice try cuttin’ her all the way out. on the plus,

foods in hispanophone kitchens taste richer when spoken.

zanahoria for carrot. melocotón names peach. many cubans

say fruta bomba for papaya. mitt romney once claimed

he loves papaya on miami cuban radio, unaware

it means pussy. que clueless, que jokes, when we speak

before we know.