Tongue-bearing Tongue by Sofía Monzón Rodríguez

Bebo agua y soy fluido:  
siento, trago, me alimento.  
A tongue gave birth to me, 
it was my task to multiply. 
Beneath this Iberian body  
I unmask my prima lingua: 
I light it, I nurse it,  
grant it truce or torment.  
Screaming in harmony, 
it keeps tuning inside me. 
It speaks to the others and, 
without listening, conducts them. 
Together they make music 
recitan disonancias, cacofonías,  
broken melodies, epic poems 
narrativas ficticias. 
I thrive in all their multiplicities  
because everything they have to say 
is my life’s manifesto: 
fragmentations 
the parable of a generation 
the branch of what I will become tomorrow, 
resíduo de todo o cambio de nada.

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February 2024 Creative Corner prompt response, published with the author's permission. Copyright © 2024 by Sofía Monzón Rodríguez. Sign up for our newsletter for a chance to be featured on our blog, Pensieri.

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Sofía Monzón Rodríguez is Assistant Professor of Translation and Interpretation at Utah State University. She combines teaching and research with creative writing and literary translation. Her poetry books, Los afectos multilingües (Valparaíso, forthcoming 2024) and Alas (Editorial Club Universitario, 2019), have won or been shortlisted for several poetry awards in Spain. Her works have been published in specialized journals such as Mutatis Mutandis, Entreculturas, Translation Matters, Transcultural, and in The Polyglot’s fifth issue, Unfaithful.