Drinking tempranillo at her laptop, a woman pretends to talk
by jabbing keys. The wind does nothing but talk
at branches or rippling metal roof, whose backtalk
is not like the shrug of a teenager who refuses to talk
about whatever texted squabble chilled her to the root. Tock
of starlings in the aural foreground, bark
of a neighbor’s frantic lab for a bass line, all talk
no bite upon the dental consonant beginning “talk,”
that’s amateur linguistics talk
for the tongue’s assault to the rear of the teeth. The maple talks
with restless green hands. The woman thinks she should have used “green”
    instead of “talk”
for the ringing bell of this epistrophe, calling her to a temple where only an
    unaffiliated priest strolling by will talk
about endings. She’s here to avoid a conversation
with a certain widow who has decided not to grieve until caught up with the
    ironing. Some women choose smalltalk
or diaries, blogging, Facebook chat
instead of thinking about the dead. This woman in particular, talk
about repression—if she really wanted to talk
she could at least use the first person. Instead there’s no one. Just pines in
    the temple garden, laughing privately, talking
with their backs to her, resinous needles muffling the ground, which longs for
    talk
though its mouth is choked with decay.