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Invocation - excerpt

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Jennifer Cheng

The speaker has difficulty speaking freely and confidently. Their voice comes out in unpredictable ways such as being abrupt, flat or brittle. When they do speak, they feel their bones becoming smaller and vacant. They often worry that others did not hear or understand what they said. At night after such conversations, their thoughts drift to octopi on the ocean floor.

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3 The world begins with a voice shut tightly, a closed throat.
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6 When I speak, bitter molasses drips from my tongue into still water basins. A sound in water wants to find the surface, but depths of water fill and push down. It happened one day that the body tried to open its wings and found it could not make a noise. The speech act runs parallel to the act of assertion, of proof. She aligns her feet under the table. Self-portrait entitled How to Part the Seas so the Sun Shines On It. Before moving to Iowa, she was often called Loud Small Girl.
7 If it is true that the number of sentences coming out of my mouth is in direct relationship to my body in the world, then bones will become smaller, vacant. When I speak to the lady behind the counter or the person sitting next to me, I can never predict how my voice will sound: smooth, abrupt, flat, brittle, lingering. Now, it comes in tiny microscopic knots or large empty spaces, often then followed by Did you say something? or a continued conversation elsewhere around me. So that afterward in the darkness as I am riding home, I am looking out the window, thinking of octopi on the ocean floor and what they see at night.

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Invocation - excerpt

  • 1. 2
  • 2. 3 The world begins with a voice shut tightly, a closed throat.
  • 3. 4
  • 4. 5
  • 5. 6 When I speak, bitter molasses drips from my tongue into still water basins. A sound in water wants to find the surface, but depths of water fill and push down. It happened one day that the body tried to open its wings and found it could not make a noise. The speech act runs parallel to the act of assertion, of proof. She aligns her feet under the table. Self-portrait entitled How to Part the Seas so the Sun Shines On It. Before moving to Iowa, she was often called Loud Small Girl.
  • 6. 7 If it is true that the number of sentences coming out of my mouth is in direct relationship to my body in the world, then bones will become smaller, vacant. When I speak to the lady behind the counter or the person sitting next to me, I can never predict how my voice will sound: smooth, abrupt, flat, brittle, lingering. Now, it comes in tiny microscopic knots or large empty spaces, often then followed by Did you say something? or a continued conversation elsewhere around me. So that afterward in the darkness as I am riding home, I am looking out the window, thinking of octopi on the ocean floor and what they see at night.