the sound of a room during a poetry reading

hushed murmurs, a squeaking chair

low mmms and ahhhs and snaps

and a poet standing dead center to begin dissection —the act of pulling out an intestine to test the color for ink

He’s calm, he’s cool, he’s New York somehow and new to here; that much is clear

He opens to wide, palette white teeth, reads poem names aloud and then dips his brush tongue in the paint of the roof of his mouth

the low, muddled sound that comes out is more an art than I’ve ever seen

as the words he speaks lick themselves onto the walls in big, bold, black letters, italicizing themselves as he speeds up, lengthening out when he slows, swirling in a tornado where the eye is around him and him alone, the rest of us buried in the welcome pelt of

a dialect unfamiliar, a voice unfamiliar, a shared medium between a genius and a child

And then? a conductor to a choir that is him alone; he commands a silence

the words repent themselves from walls, the tornado sweeps them up and drops them again back into his waiting mouth that shuts —softly.

The audience claps.