Improv/Imitation 1, Week 1

Paramour by Angie Estes
An adverb by way of
love, what's par for
l'amour is par
for the course. Say
you're out for dinner one evening
with Yves, and you think of
the phrase evening
of life. Who doesn't want
to be called something
other than the name
we're given: the cow we call
boeuf or beef when eaten, the house
when it's lived in,
home, and then one we
go home withj, love.
Lysippus, the Greek
sculptor, used to say
that his predecessors made men
as they really were, but he made them as
they appeared to be, just as Picasso
replied to those who claimed Stein
did not look like the portrait
he made: she will. What makes
the wine the wine, is it the grape
or the terroir, terror or
terrain? You think Burgundy
evening, assigned
age of light, first
sign of winter, art of
decay: assignage, the art of curing
cheese, fromage, what the French call
feet of the angels.

Semantics
No one gives the Spanish credit
for lisping their words like children:
cero, thero, cielo, thielo.
Imagine a dinner with Antonio Banderas,
speaking in his native language from
Andaluthia, Ethpana, a sound like a flute.
He flutters his 'r's, his 'l's, and bids
you to do the same; your voice sounds harsh,
unforgiving and brazen in its stinging 's's.
No one gives the Spanish credit
for speaking more clearly than the Mexicans,
only the Spanish themselves, beating
grammar books over the slang-speaking Southerners.
But perhaps that difference gives neither the edge,
as it were, but rather gives them a common
marker to talk about.
I don't want to speak to you, you slasher
of what was once a language of tingling tongues.
Well, I would rather not hear your lisp,
your arrogant usage of vocabulary.
I would much rather listen to the singing
of Colombian Juanes than mark your high-nosed
palabras. Palabrath.