The Word For the Book

At first it was just the words for colors Blue
Red Green
Purple. And then the colors began taking on more specificity
mustard, ebon, cream turquoise, and soon the words
for the colors began showing the color each was describing before starting to mix together, bleed
leech, leaving an all -too-prismatic page
upon page upon page of words that no longer mean anything
or mean a little
too much
The word for the ankle bone in an undiscovered, extinct sea mammal The word for the world’s last mouth
The word for a word that sounds like it should The word of amazement
The inches. One mississippi.
The last place they expected to find themselves was in the word for the sensation of a tongue on a screaming tea kettle.
They had thought the words were from them, but they soon found themselves yanked about by the words,
as if the voice they thought was their own was actually a leash and collar,
or even
some barbed hook stuck in their throat
and attached
as if by string
to some celestial mariotteer.
Those kinda words.
The words it was helpful to have killed.
My word, she said, before walking into the fire. The word for opulence contra Wagner,
the word for getting fake ketamine but still, you know,
kinda feeling it.
The word digging its way out of the earth and straight into someone’s foot.
The word that used to mean little but now means vulnerable. The word imposed on the buildings of your city.
The word you word when you weep.
The word instead of the fist,
used either for pleasure or torture.
The secret word
that must be taught in whispers, or broken apart,
or can never be taught, only discovered.
The word that records its speakers.
The word imagined but never said.
The word rusted to the side of another language, having been disappeared from its own.
The word that takes longer to say than to write.
The word that causes phlegm to gather in your lungs.
The word that is beautiful for only one day.
The word that disproves beauty being truth.
The word that causes anyone listening to it to go
absolutely
bonkers
and start saying it to themselves.
The world word,
which has languages birthing and dying all over it.
The word for missionary sex with missionaries. The word that leaves just for a moment before
rushing back in for its lighter.
The word that gets lit as its spoken,
and causes the room to be bathed in copier-white light.
The word that forgets how it’s supposed to sound. The mega-word, nega-word, or ultra-word.
The word ore. The funeral words.
The word that needs money to work.
The word that opens up into a dictionary.
The word who lives his whole life never even daring to speak. The word on the internet, manifesting on every screen,
in every pocket, on every eyeball, through all the satellites. The word invariably convicted.
The word for missionary sex with angels.
The word used instead of a hairdryer,
instead of a scalpel, a satellite.
The word that makes the prayer holy.
The word that kills my grandmother.
The word that kills my mother.
The word that kills me.
The word that kills you, like
in a good way.
What book
is that word in?

Author Biography

Donald Dunbar lives in Portland and helps run the reading series If Not For Kidnap. His first book, Eyelid Lick, won the 2012 Fence Modern Poets Series prize and will be out in the fall.