Put A Stone In Your Mouth

Pam Galloway lives and works and writes in Vancouver.
Her poems have been published widely in literary magazines and anthologies and on the website of the Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. One of her poems travelled on the buses in Vancouver and around the province as part of Poetry in Transit and other poems were included in the beautiful photographic/poetry collection A Verse Map of Vancouver (Anvil Press, 2009). Her poem "Genesis" is in the archives of Monday's Poem (2004) and her poetry was included in the Leaf Press anthology Love in Four Positions (2003). Her first book of poetry Parallel Lines was published in 2006. Her current manuscript has the working title of Passing Strangers.

"Put a Stone in Your mouth"

Feel it smooth, the weight upon my tongue
that wants to shift it this way or that.
Be silent. Let words trace
the shape of the stone,
the way veins thread marble,
light and dark.

Let love's honeyed whispers
smooth the surface
for the tongue to suck back,
swallow.

And let questions serrate the smooth edge,
a time-lapsed erosion, before
words of anger can carve the stone,
building heat in a gargoyle's
protruding eyes and tongue,
fire in the throat
that wants out.

I will hold a stone in my mouth.
Hold my peace.