Two poems by Troy Varvel
If You Accept My Silence
I’m still nervous
about stuttering
in front of you,
staring as my half-
formed sentences
scatter at your feet.
Instead I stuff unsaids,
fatty and loose like gelatin,
in a Ziploc tucked
in the back
of the medicine cabinet
and wait for them
to make sense. Every day
I pluck more unsaid words.
Every day is another
I have with you.
The dark and the unheard
ripen my words.
Every stunted thought.
Every syllable strung
from my throat.
I’ll give them to you.
One day.
Opening the bag
beneath the cold
florescent light, speaking
stored inside.
One day.
I’ll talk all of this out.
about stuttering
in front of you,
staring as my half-
formed sentences
scatter at your feet.
Instead I stuff unsaids,
fatty and loose like gelatin,
in a Ziploc tucked
in the back
of the medicine cabinet
and wait for them
to make sense. Every day
I pluck more unsaid words.
Every day is another
I have with you.
The dark and the unheard
ripen my words.
Every stunted thought.
Every syllable strung
from my throat.
I’ll give them to you.
One day.
Opening the bag
beneath the cold
florescent light, speaking
stored inside.
One day.
I’ll talk all of this out.
Black Birds Crashing, Twisting, Rising
Every day, something breaks inside of me
and every day it keeps on breaking.
Here the sun’s soft shadows burn my tongue
when I open my mouth and the blue-black fog
of my stuttering steams out like opening
a bathroom door after a hot shower. My voice
is built up like that, coming out bit by bit
and then all at once.
That’s a lie.
I stutter. It’s always bit by bit.
Interruptions and clapped shut doors
can’t be stopped. Not in this world.
Not from my scarred up larynx.
Not from damaged speech center. Or whatever
part of me causes a stutter.
On days like this, when I’m blaming
black birds crashing through branches
or the spinning of leaves into my therapist’s window
or the hushing shut of office doors
for my stuttering, my speech therapist
says--
Wait. That’s not important.
What she says, that is.
Every sound is an interruption. Everything
splits my words.
Sometimes my speech therapist tells me
when you close your eyes you feel like you’re levitating.
When she tells me this her voice goes all falsetto
then fades into the distancing hum of the a/c,
the steady beating of the beaded ceiling fan cord.
I’m not saying this ends in my own levitation
but I’m not saying it couldn’t. Nothing is too much
to believe in if you don’t expect it to happen instantly.
and every day it keeps on breaking.
Here the sun’s soft shadows burn my tongue
when I open my mouth and the blue-black fog
of my stuttering steams out like opening
a bathroom door after a hot shower. My voice
is built up like that, coming out bit by bit
and then all at once.
That’s a lie.
I stutter. It’s always bit by bit.
Interruptions and clapped shut doors
can’t be stopped. Not in this world.
Not from my scarred up larynx.
Not from damaged speech center. Or whatever
part of me causes a stutter.
On days like this, when I’m blaming
black birds crashing through branches
or the spinning of leaves into my therapist’s window
or the hushing shut of office doors
for my stuttering, my speech therapist
says--
Wait. That’s not important.
What she says, that is.
Every sound is an interruption. Everything
splits my words.
Sometimes my speech therapist tells me
when you close your eyes you feel like you’re levitating.
When she tells me this her voice goes all falsetto
then fades into the distancing hum of the a/c,
the steady beating of the beaded ceiling fan cord.
I’m not saying this ends in my own levitation
but I’m not saying it couldn’t. Nothing is too much
to believe in if you don’t expect it to happen instantly.
Troy Varvel is the author of the chapbook, Licking the Splinter (forthcoming from Kelsay Books, 2020). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Dialogist, Iron Horse Literary Review, River Styx, and Yemassee, among others.
Sinejan Kılıç Buchina is a NY based artist and visual instructor. She is of Circassian-Abkhazian ancestry, born in Turkey. She received her B.F.A. in Art in Istanbul, and continued her education with programs in London and Berlin, and completed her MA in New York. Buchina has exhibited in galleries and institutions throughout New York, London and Istanbul, and is currently working on evolving projects in New York, Sukhum and Istanbul.