AD SPOT
by
Daniel Lassell
Daniel Lassell is the author of Spit (forthcoming 2021), winner of the 2020 Wheelbarrow Books Emerging Poetry Prize selected by Gabrielle Calvocoressi. His recent poetry appears in the Southern Humanities Review, River Styx, The Pinch, Colorado Review, and Prairie Schooner. In his youth, he raised llamas and alpacas on a farm in Kentucky. Today, he lives with his family in Colorado.
from AD SPOT
*
When I stumbled upon the town,
at first, I didn’t know of “rapid talk,”
the way a sentence rushes upon
an ear, striking it with sound,
so that endings morph to blur
—and because it’s blur,
it’s enough to acknowledge.
I was told never to believe in words.
Words are intangible, disappointing.
But then…
I thought, O
how this cadence of speech could be
useful to use
in all communication,
the time-saver it could be.
But then…
tongues whirred above me,
abhorrent spinning,
trying out new meanings,
new explanations—
thereasonwedon’tspeakslowisthereasonwedowedotoavoidtherealtr
uthofourselvestheliesapparentinourwillingnesstobelieveandbelieve
withoutverificationforwithoutverificationweOwhatwedowhatweco
uldbelieveandbeliefhowithasatoxicwayofharming
