Oak Morse | Word Tampering & More

Word Tampering

Celibate (n.) Yesterday my-old grandmother asked if my homie had a girlfriend. I said not right now. She said I know he is not sitting up being celibate. One, no one said he was being celibate. Two, my grandmother made the word a hurricane no one wants to be swept up in. Initially, celibacy was a party, the act of refraining and rejoicing.

Read (v.) The process of decoding symbols for information or to escape our own introspection. Always had a sunny coloring until it got shady. No pun intended. My cousin told my overweight cousin, I would love to take you out to eat because I know you enjoy a good meal. Sly. The forever feud they have. Now, read is an attack on looks and character.

Feminist (n.) All hail the feminists, who valiantly crusade. If you listen close to the ring, there’s more fight than a fist in the air, like feminists are running around town waving war in people’s faces. Feminists have always been passionate about equality, never pissed-off rebels. Who tried to poison this word? A misogynist, probably.

Retarded (adj.) sat on a wall, had a great fall —used as a verbal whack. Retarded broke into mentally challenged. Mentally challenged wore a lab coat. Sounded too intelligent to be converted. Wait for it………fell again. Hey special needs. Welcome to the neighborhood, make yourself at home, but not for too long. Did I just read, special needs?

Cluttering (n.) I have, cluttering, a fluency disorder, irregular speaking rate, improper pauses and minimal breathing—pandemonium spewing from the mouth. Fixing it has been like climbing up a muddy landslide, barehanded. Cluttering. Just wait until this word gets out to the world. There goes my chances for new heights in life. The wind of this new word is spreading like wildfire.

Opportunist (n.) was a ball of fire, a high-flier, ambition to the 100 th power. Now, it’s a heister, a shyster, with a hat worn way too low over the eyes. In the tone of my grandmother, folks ought to be ashamed of themselves, raising knives to words, making them be something they never ask to be.

Invasion

Day one as hawks and hummingbirds swarmed over

folktales carved in my trees until

the thunder of gunshots.

Before I became America, I was tranquil, tilted and tanned

feet soaked in the Atlantic, the Pacific.

as if summers were forever,

and winters were even warm.

My sweet grass scarred purple,

my singing river— a transit

for breathless bodies,

flooded with blood and blackened water.

This, this was the first day of death,

those ships, La Santa Maria, Niña, Pinta,

anchored upon my breast,

against my tender terrain like a filthy man

sliding into a young girl.

European boots crushed my neck,

cackling crept on me like—

a pack of hyenas on a savory hunt

shouting New World, shouting riches,

as if my body wasn’t glorious enough to be shared.

Day for day, my grazeland became their farmland,

my shoreline—ruins for their ship waste, iron tools,

worn-out weapons, the invaders presence alone felt like a pistol

pushed under a child’s chin.

Inhaling the unforeseen, the not knowing what

was next, was a lurid lullaby

I tremored. As I was a dove under the fierce gaze

of hornets; after I spotted venom invaders left

on my bright squash, these

baskets braided from straw and leaves,

and on signs and symbols in stones

that tell another love story.

As much as invaders fondled me, stripped

the altitude essence of my geography,

they’ll never know grass so grieved green

even if they look at it through their green eyes.

Day forty-two and tributaried tears take my cheek
where caribou and llamas once crouched
away from prey, where villagers
of my pasture once spun tall with sunflowers.

It’s hundreds of years later, like a crying calf whose
pasture mother is still as a grave–– like moonlight knowing
darkness, I live what my body used to glow with,
only if a body could purge such wreckage…

Oak Morse lives in Houston, Texas, where he teaches creative writing and theatre and leads a youth poetry troop, the Phoenix Fire-Spitters. He was the winner of the 2017 Magpie Award for Poetry in Pulp Literature, a Finalist for the 2023 Honeybee Poetry Award and a Semi-Finalist for the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. A Warren Wilson MFA graduate, Oak has received Pushcart Prize nominations, fellowships from Brooklyn Poets, Twelve Literary Arts, Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay as well as a Stars in the Classroom honor from the Houston Texans. His work appears in Black Warrior Review, Obsidian, Tupelo, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Nimrod, Terrain.org, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, among others. www.oakmorse.com