Spectrogram of a human meadowlark

match my arrhythmic dialect—
three syllables become two

ky oat

now transform a watershed—
praying mantises latched onto your tongue

crick

draw a sonogram of me
with the catechism lodged part way
between my crop & gizzard

my frequency range a wrong smell
ringing off my hollow bones
their scaffolding an impossible Fibonacci

senses poor development in me
commits infanticide to stop
my infernal buzzing

massacre a field of vowels
inject them slantwise into your gumline

ev dent

pr t nearly

watch as mosquitoes take away
small parts of me raising my pitch
my altitude—pine needles

bowing over me like a soft cradle
sap across my lips
shhhhhhh

now pinch my syrinx
watch a kaleidoscope
of nonlinear phenomena

jump off the terminus of my throat
deeper into the hardening clay
my restless bronchi

see ment

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S.A. Leger is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated writer and scientist from Newfoundland, Canada. Her poems have most recently appeared in or are forthcoming from Conduit, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Fourteen Hills, The Dodge, Storm Cellar, and Dunes Review, among others. She spends her days exploring the 47th parallel with her wife and dachshund.