appealing

The Maynard
Fall 2020

Danielle Badra
0:00
 
 

Bracketed

—after Philip Metres

Identity isn’t [always easy to identify
there is blood and belief and] an end—

it’s a portal, [the acquisition of language,
the untrained turns of tongue,] a deportation

from the country [profiting off precise word-fare by
attacking ancient inkwells, those dark pools] of mirrors,

an inflection [inside the terrified esophagus
instinctual utterance of danger] within a question,

punctuation is [the alternative to silence
this revolution is illegible] the sentence

of birth [and death is a foreign dialect].