the geographic tongue

Georgia Dennison

Adriatic–someone 
choking on an allergic reaction 
to wind. It doesn’t belong to you, 
even if you licked clean 
the map of it, cut your tongue 
open on paper-water, 
the crayon-blue sea. 
It doesn’t belong to you 
because you are still Scarboroughed
in the library of Ponderosa pine
and your mouth makes a consistent O 
while it wraps around the bow-and-arrow
letter A. Adriatic: to puncture, 
to pleasure, to move through 
the body, to 
slash like an equivalent, 
like a woman 
speaking the habitual word.

Georgia Dennison was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana. Her work has appeared in Pacifica Literary Review, Borderlands Review, K’in Literary Journal, Carve Magazine and more. She is the recipient of the Greta Wrolstad Poetry Award. She currently writes and resides in Portland, Maine.