OAK MORSE

The Utterance of Angela Bassett

            If I could only twirl with words.
I want to waltz with Angela Bassett’s tongue,
            the elegance of her speech,
a silver rainfall,
            sentences sprouting from a golden canal,
rebirthing the potency of English.
            Whatever she’s made of, may it send for me.
I’ll go where it tells me to go, to an outer world
            or a bloody shore if I must.

Who taught you the cadence of Utopia?
            Do you know when you utter, I absorb,
become the red of desire and a hint of envy.
            To spin cashmere words with fine diction.
When your lips part, a giant butterfly flutters into the atmosphere.

May your grace teach me the secret to speech,
            to burst with epiphanies.
Let me be a silhouette of your every statement, Angela,
            whatever it takes, let the grace teach me,
soothe my gibberish tongue to sleep. 

Oak Morse lives in Houston, Texas, where he teaches creative writing and theatre and leads a youth poetry troop, the Phoenix Fire-Spitters. He was the winner of the 2017 Magpie Award for Poetry in Pulp Literature, a Finalist for the 2023 Honeybee Poetry Award and a Semi-Finalist for the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. A Warren Wilson MFA graduate, Oak has received Pushcart Prize nominations, fellowships from Brooklyn Poets, Twelve Literary Arts, Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay as well as a Stars in the Classroom honor from the Houston Texans. His work appears in Black Warrior Review, Obsidian, Tupelo, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Nimrod, Terrain.org, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, among others. www.oakmorse.com