The Tongues of Angels
When my father lay on the church carpet roaring,
eyes closed, two hours, three nights a week,
for two weeks, that was weird.
I tiptoed around the Lion of Judah
at midnight wondering if we could go home soon.
Speaking in angelic languages
was much more normal, praying
with the Holy Spirit. During a revival when I was ten,
my father asked if I wanted to be filled
with the Spirit, an overflowing cup. The preacher, Sherby,
had won Mr. Tennessee before he got saved; he could bench
four-fifty and had a neck like a bull.
My eyes scrounged the floor before they darted
to my father’s, nodding. Sherby placed his paw on my forehead;
eyelids closed. I scrubbed my brain,
let my tongue go limp as if playing dead,
waited for an angel’s tongue to replace my own,
but I only felt the pressure
of his palm urging me to fall back
into my father’s arms, to be gently slain.
Nothing hit ‘Play.’ My tongue was a corpse.
Finally, I stole a phrase that had rolled across the floor
the day before. A mockingbird,
I repeated, “Ah shah la tang day shittiaco,”
over and over and over. And fell.
Three days later, cocooned
on the couch at home, I overheard my parents’ voices,
my mother recalling how she had once approached
a man babbling on the floor of the church. She had smelt
sulfur on his breath, seen the puff
of yellow: it was a demon
speaking through him, mocking the work
of the Spirit. My blanket overtook me
like leathery wings; violet skin
with green blotches rose in my brain as over a body.
Was this an angel convicting me? If only
I could cut out its tongue.