Language Lessons
Foreign consonants clicking your tongue
Struggle over the word for cat
Repeat apple
Until you can taste the right vowel
Force hard lips to lisp
Force soft sounds to clash
Grapple daily with logic spelled wrong
Acclimate
Easier then
To say want
To say more
Memorized
The past perfect
The present
Not quite
Learn to say
Parts of speech and what should not be spoken
Glottal catch in the throat
To pronounce the word Why
Inflection of doubt
Can you help me
Now your accent is pure
Graduate to the back of the book
The noun pain
The word fear
The verb mystery
The strangely declining
Because
© Laura Sheahen
Laura Sheahen’s poems have been published in In Posse Review, Four Way Review, Stirring, Bangalore Review, and other journals in the US and UK. She lives in Tunisia.
Onegoodpoem.blogspot.com | Instagram.com/thegeniesmiles
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