No Mouth

By Benjamin Faro

On a finger

of continent between golden, earth

-laden waters, where sunset is brighter even

than L.A. and the Huang Hue never stops

arriving, I turn west to reject the mouth

as a place of expulsion. Why is it

called a river mouth if a mouth

is a place where things

should only enter?

And where

is the mouth of an ocean

current? A river within:

no headwaters, no mouth.

Like this pined coast,

never-ending. I

move my mouth

for nothing

but kissing anyone

who listens, and in the dark

it’s better. From a distance,

neon in the waves

looks like algae. Alive, no

mouth. In a meditative state,

I started to fast for many hours,

but this evening I failed. I felt my mouth

swallow the terrible cider of the sentence

that was to come; and here I will use the word

masticate because of the M: mother, I’ll tell you,

I chewed on the pulp of my words until nothing

at all was intact.

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Photo by Joshua Leong