"Oral Culture"

Click the arrow on the audio player to hear Lesley Wheeler read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes.

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In my classroom there are nine windows full of mountains, but eight of the windows
..........are painted shut.
We mispronounce words on purpose and draw little marks over them, spears and
..........cups and kisses.
In my classroom accent and sibilance, thump and stagger, chalk and analog.

I am paid to say formula, copia, and residue, and I am happy to say them, work and
..........joy and religion.
My grandmother had a song for her name and a song for driving home and a song for
..........childish love, but my children will not learn them.
My mother has a story for school clothes and a story for sherry and a story for
..........wicked teachers, but my children want me to read to them from heavy books,
..........the voices climbing up and down the scale, roughened by humors.

It is all good, pages and timbres, classrooms and mothers, but something is lost.
Or it is losing, loss of steam, loss of capital, loss of confidence, power.
I remember dialects changing as the blender whirred, suitcases emptied,
..........suitcases packed.
Homemade ice cubes and powder for whisky sours. Not that people were kinder. They
..........were bitter. The lemony foam flattened quickly, as if bubbles were more delicate
..........then, thinner-walled.
Listen to the foam of my voice and I will pour it for you, all the tiny stories in one
..........intoxicating stream, catching each other's sparkle,
now, before the taste disappears.

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