Jeremy T. Karn
This Is How You Know You're a Stutterer
you’ll feel its beginning,
in the deepness
of your mouth like thorns nailed in the flesh
wounds growing in the back of your throat
like cobwebs
that hang from there to here
it will make your mouth taste like silence,
smell like the graveyard
your grandfather was buried in
& sometimes,
you’ll feel dislocated from your body
like those giggles
that are now lost in your childhood’s songs
you’ll learn how some words swim
away from beneath your tongue
& clog themselves in your veins,
then you will take forever to have faith in your tongue
in the deepness
of your mouth like thorns nailed in the flesh
wounds growing in the back of your throat
like cobwebs
that hang from there to here
it will make your mouth taste like silence,
smell like the graveyard
your grandfather was buried in
& sometimes,
you’ll feel dislocated from your body
like those giggles
that are now lost in your childhood’s songs
you’ll learn how some words swim
away from beneath your tongue
& clog themselves in your veins,
then you will take forever to have faith in your tongue
Biography
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Jeremy T. Karn (he/him) writes from somewhere in Liberia. His work has appeared in 20.35: Contemporary African Poets Volume III Anthology, The Whale Road Review, The Rising Phoenix, Kalahari Review, African Writers, Praxis Online, Shallow Tales Review and elsewhere. His chapbook Miryam Magdalit has been selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani (The African Poetry Book Fund), in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2021 New-Generation African Poets chapbook box set. He tweets @jeremy_karn96
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