After Listening to Chomsky

by Sonia Di Placido

I am reminded of how my dinner is a language
i doesn’t want to eat

the glow of root vegetables: beets, carrots,
colourful potatoes, parsnips each hidden
underneath the feet

I’d rather take a pill to remedy hunger
a white powder that is a foreign specimen
from a different tongue

I would still need water not to think, describe
taste the sound of uh or guh—U and H are not
a hail-in to grow these lungs

down to this gut there’s a wholesome rich warm
trauma-held carbon dioxide to exhale haaah

just another billion bacteria spread out before
the suck in to ex-pyre the tips of my bone dust

— from Juniper Volume 2, Issue 2