Partial Talk

A tongue is for pressing against the roof of a mouth unencumbered by plas-
tic. It starts the fire in the pot-belly stove of the little schoolhouse of recitation
where others fill the room later with perfect diction. They come once the
room is warm. The tongue arrives early with a piece of salt cod wrapped in
its pocket. It wants to blend. It wants to take back its share of glottal stops,
clicking dentals and effortless sibilances. True, its new ability to lisp enables
it to sound polished in an old school way. It doesn't mind taking on a stage
presence; but still, life isn't all play-acting and the tongue yearns for its old
ease of diction. It practices down by the creek of its consonants, getting the
d's and t's to skip across its two front teeth: one real, one fake. Who wouldn't
want to whistle again, chew gum and Bronx cheer the wooden-tongued?
Never again will it cluck at old men pressing their lips together on the benches
of shopping arcades, bus stations and courthouse lawns – men forever
coming to terms with the plastic and false ivory they remove before bed. The
tongue sympathizes with them and with Gladys at the corner store who
grapples with certain combinations of vowels and consonants not because
she has a neuromuscular disease but because she too has had to get up
early and warm the stove.