Potential Titles: Tongue

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Leaves sulfur on your tongue - Elmaz Abinader "After Breakfast"

Comet ash and the ten thousand buds of the tongue - Kaveh Akbar "The Perfect Poem"

To a softness that renames their tongues - Allison Albino "Cast Iron"

With ready tongue her story told - Ellen Tracy Alden "Jungenthor, the Giant"

This hooded ferryman with forked tongue - Mike Allen "Carrington's Ferry"

His name unburied from my tongue - Lauren K. Alleyne "Gift"

The thorned secrets our tongues have learned - Lauren K. Alleyne "How could I have known I would need to remember your laughter,"

Joining the arteries of lapping tongues - Gia Anansi-Shakur "The Owl"

Salt my tongue on hardened tears - Maya Angelou "Mourning Grace"

False tongues three have whisper'd evil - "Anthology of Jugoslav Poetry X: Salutation of the Morning Star" transl. by Sir John Bowring

The ravelled knot of tongues - Raymond Antrobus "Echo"

Always in praise of the elder tongue - William Archila "Little soul lost, little shining ghost"

Cold hearts and thankless tongues - Matthew Arnold "Mycerinus"

Like the fire on our tongues - Elizabeth Bartlett "Hunger"

Bear the strife of little tongues and coward insults - Robert Blair "The Grave"

Generations mingle and whisper in tongues - Leah Bobet "Leonid's Family Reunion"

From the aimless tongues of these trees - Max Bodenheim "Three Portraits"

Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue - Anne Bronte "Consolation"

And each with Frenzy's tongue - Emily Bronte "My Comforter"

Whose tongues learn first to cry - Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison "Recovery"

Bringing a lapping tongue of water up over our toes - Sarah Browning "Praisesong"

Longer than Memory's tongue can tell - R.M.C. "Lay of the Madman" [The Knickerbocker v.10, no.6, December 1837]

With their eyes of fire, and their tongues of flame - R.M.C. "Lay of the Madman" [The Knickerbocker v.10, no.6, December 1837]

The damage Greek has wrought upon your tongue - Scott Cairns "Loves"

Its salt stays on the tongue - Andrew Calis "The Sea / Is Sacred Still"

A cat's rough tongue scraping land back to waves - Andrew Calis "The Sea / Is Sacred Still"

Failure on men's awed tongues - W. Wilfred Campbell "Unabsolved"

As the eye and the tongue of the serpent - W. Wilfred Campbell "The Vengeance of Saki"

A cupful of hesitation finally beginning to loosen your tongues - Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello "The Houseguest"

When anger reaches its iron tongue - Stephanie Cawley "Not"

Tongues of stone - Gabrielle Civil "19th Birthday in Paris"

And even silence found a tongue - John Clare "I Hid My Love"

A tongue blistered with smiling - Lucille Clifton [untitled]

Loose of tongue and light - Arthur Hugh Clough "Fragments of the Mystery of the Fall. Scene IV"

No tongue shall dare to tell - Arthur Hugh Clough "Peschiera"

Time's iron tongue proclaims - Rev. John Clutton "Sabbath-Breaking on the Canal"

Whose thousand evil tongues are one - Mary Elizabeth Coleridge "The Witches' Wood"

The failing tongue of a hushing bell - Helen Gray Cone "The Ride to the Lady"

No more tongue to tell of the poppy - Giorgiomaria Cornelio "La specia storta (The Bent Species)" transl. by Moira Egan

Wisdom on Folly's tongue - James H. Cousins "Heaven and Earth"

A thousand tongues, and nine and ninety-nine lie - Stephen Crane "The Black Riders"

In comfort's alien tongue - Adelaide Crapsey "The Mourner"

tongue stained in mulberry blood - jason b crawford "Untitled 1975-86"

Razors beneath the magnolia tongue's lash - Kyle Dargan "States May Sing Their Songs of Praise"

Teach us the tongues of the angry - Kwame Dawes "Talk"

Birds of foreign tongue - Emily Dickinson "Book 1: Love X: Transplanted"

a remedy tucked under your tongue - Caroline Dinh "City Girls"

The remnants of anger on my tongue - Chris Dombrowski "Francis"

Those things uttered by the seven tongues - Chris Dombrowski "Vespers Beginning as Sheep Tallow in the Hands of a Priest"

That ocher sun's crumble upon the tongue - Rebecca Dunham "In Which She Opens the Box"

Account for the nectar on my tongue - Joshua Effiong "3D Presentation of a Body Undergoing Catharsis in a Transterrestrial Habitat"

before shame became my native tongue - Safia Elhillo "Transport"

What evils from the tongue may flow - Charlotte Elliott "Thursday Morning"

Extolling from the tongue of Fame - Erastus W. Ellsworth "Shakspeare" [sic]

With the blunt edge of a practiced tongue - Claudia Emerson "Aftermath"

Carries a talisman under his tongue - Ralph Waldo Emerson "Fate"

Speaking by the tongues of flowers - Ralph Waldo Emerson "May-Day"

That once spoke the tongue of smoke - Martin Espada "Heal the Cracks in the Bell of the World"

Speaks in the water's tongue - Martin Espada "Not Here"

So much like a vengeful tongue - Maggie Farren "Palms"

Tongues of fire tied together - Carolyn Forche "Alfansa"

Counting the dark tongues of bells - Carolyn Forche "The Memory of Elena"

any savage tongue consumed again and again - Malcolm Friend "Caliban Theory"

the one i sing into being with this savage tongue - Malcolm Friend "Caliban Theory"

Came in some laughing tongue - Zona Gale "Last Night I Dreamed I Saw My Mother Young"

The sophisticated tongue of lawyers can turn right to wrong - John Gay "Fable LI: Dog and Fox" [edited, updated, & adapted by John Benson Rose]

Familiar with tongues I sought - Rae Gouirand "Terminus"

Call like tongues of dread - Ivor Gurney "Omens"

In a tongue of wind off the Atlantic - Joy Harjo "The Book of Myths"

Set the moth's tongue toward tomorrow - francine j. harris "feeder"

Your only plausible tongue - francine j. harris "you can't remove the city"

Bright flesh startling my fasting tongue - Penny Harter "Just Grapefruit"

Though the prophet tongue was ashes - Patrick Joseph Hartigan writing as John O'Brien "St. Patrick's Day"

Words imposing on my tongue like obols - Seamus Heaney "Singing School: 5. Fosterage"

Memories inscribed in other tongues - Stephanie Heit "Yours Truly"

And Marigold is Music's tongue - Jennie Earngey Hill "The Goldfinch"

Every note of every lung and tongue and throat - Ralph Hodgson "The Song of Honour"

Shouting and screaming in tongues - Darrel Alejandro Holnes "Black Parade"

With tongues that talk no more to me - A.E. Housman "A Shropshire Lad XXXVIII"

For twist of a beggar's tongue - Richard Hughes "Gratitude"

The beautiful berry leaves a dark stain on the tongue - Luisa A. Igloria "Why appropriation is not necessarily the same as mastery"

The words which burn upon my tongue - Ione "Lay" [The Knickerbocker v.10 no.3 Sept. 1837]

Squares of sugar flattening on the tongue - Major Jackson "Letters to Brooks [Spring Garden]"

Trust not to her silent tongue - Alexander Jamieson "The Maid Who Wove"

forked tongue out tasting his own aimless circles - Tamara Jerée "In the Cult of Nearly-Lost Dreams"

my tongue is bile & tomorrow - Jzl Jmz "Exhibition"

Burdens in an ancient tongue - Lionel Johnson "Trentals"

become a fiery tongue to scorch the earth - Camisha L. Jones "Intercession"

The irises and their harsh tongues - Lois P. Jones "Between Fulmination and Adoration"

I was a cobra's tongue - Saeed Jones "Thallium"

Through all the silence on our tongues - Tish Jones "There Was No Sun in the Room"

Forked tongue trailing the coil - Janine Joseph "Oh, I'm Dying, I'm Dying"

Remembrance of such sweetness on the tongue - Zilka Joseph "Once Upon a Shabbath"

In the shadow of a stranger tongue - Fady Joudah "Taurus"

The feather on my tongue - Ilya Kaminsky "Alfonso Stands Answerable"

And tongues unknown the cedar spoke - Edward Kearsley "Camp-Fire Lyrics: I. Camp--In Three Lights" [Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, v.15, no.89, May 1875]

Let not my weak tongue faulter - John Keats "Endymion, Book I [A thing of beauty is a joy for ever]"

Too huge for mortal tongue or pen - John Keats "Hyperion"

The hum of incarnation swarming my tongue - Vandana Khanna "Creation Myth part 3"

With knots in my veins, thorns on my tongue - Vandana Khanna "Destruction Myth part 2"

Hold time in place under her tongue - Vandana Khanna "The Goddess Left Behind"

For his tongue that shamed their swords - Rudyard Kipling "Rahere"

Dissolve on a satin tongue - Joan Larkin "The Combo"

Has joined the ancient lost tongues - Michael Lauchlan "Detroit Pheasant"

A tongue of darkened flame to flicker in me - D.H. Lawrence "Shades"

Some song smuggled under my tongue - Aimee Le "Where I Learn to Shrink"

The hidden tongue of an ambiguous song - Richard Le Gallienne "Young Love IV: Once"

Tourmaline to smooth my tongue - R.B. Lemberg "Long Shadow"

That lives on the imagination's tongue - Denise Levertov "O Taste and See"

To break on the tongue - Denise Levertov "On the Parables of the Mustard Seed"

Who holds your tongue captive - Dana Levin "According to the Gospel of Yes"

Spoken in the tongue of salt - M.L. Liebler "This Atlantic Language"

The tongue taste of natural color - Ada Limon "Gratitude in Spite of Oneself"

A sparrow underneath her tongue - Ada Limon "Territory"

Who gave me a borrowed tongue - Nabila Lovelace "By Inch-Meal a Disease"

Run my tongue along the granite sky - Canisia Lubrin "In the Middle of the Burning"

With glamour-tutored tongue spread glory - James Allan Mackereth "Ioläus"

The guards hidden under my tongue - Joyce Mansour "Auditory Hallucination" transl. by Carol Cosman

Where the singers of Saturn find tongue - Don Marquis "This Earth, It Is Also a Star"

Assume the order of human tongue - J. Michael Martinez "Self-Portrait as Letter Addressed to Self"

Addressing my hardening tongue to asbestos and silicon - Harry Martinson "Aniara 81" transl. by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg

Flowers on the conquistador's tongue - Ted Mathys "Key to the Kingdom"

Until the last sad tongue of flame expire - Theodore Maynard "Nocturne"

With the cold, dark fruit under our tongues - Brandy Nālani McDougall "Ka ‘Ōlelo"

With lights breaking in their tongues - M.S. Merwin "White Morning"

This fright that has no tongue - Alice Meynell "The Treasure"

Which, on my living tongue, is dead - Gabriela Mistral "The Teller of Tales" (translated by Ursula K. Le Guin)

Splinters on my tongue - Anis Mojgani "Sock Hop"

Our tongues are in cages - Justin Rovillos Monson "Institutional(ized) Political Poem, or Poem for Disputed Territories"

Golden tongue nourished on thirst - Pablo Neruda "Furies and Sorrows" translated by Donald D. Walsh

Corrosive tongue against the water - Pablo Neruda "To Envy" transl. by Alastair Reid

Tongues and weapons of His power - John Henry Newman "The Greek Fathers"

A litany that still haunts the tongue - Grace Nichols "Litany"

Upward swept by tongues of fire - Robert Nichols "A Faun's Holiday"

Sweeter than Euphrosyne's tongue - Robert Nichols "A Faun's Holiday"

Thought pain had no tongue - Naomi Shihab Nye "Arabic"

The cat with feathers under its tongue - Mary Oliver "I am the one"

If light had a mouth and a tongue - Mary Oliver "West Wind 3"

Wrenching stutters like rivets off my tongue - Gregory Pardlo "Epistemology of the Phone Booth"

Tens of thousands upon the tongue - Maryam Ivette Parhizkar "Study Guide Toward Naturalization of the Mouth"

The devil touched my tongue - Dorothy Parker "Fighting Words"

Tongues & yarns of fire - Kiki Petrosino "The Child Was in the Woods"

Woody herbs burning our tongues - Kiki Petrosino "Witch Wife"

A tongue of gold parsing the dust motes - Rachel Pittman "The Quickening"

The babbling tongue of vanity - Alexander Pushkin "The Prophet" transl. by John Pollen

A knife where my tongue lay - Sina Queyras "The Applicant"

When a tongue attempts to pronounce the dead - Charles Rafferty "Words"

Under the cutlass of her tongue - Shivanee Ramlochan "Witch Hindu"

The iron tongue of Time - Herbert Randall "To the Standish Guards of the Old Colony"

In its ardor, drowning brain and tongue - Thomas Buchanan Read "A Night Thought" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIII no.4, Oct. 1848]

When her serpent tongue betrays her - M. Regan "The Hollow"

An oyster on my tongue searches for the taste of ocean - Barbara Jane Reyes "[state of emergency]"

That tongue shall spell a prince's funeral song - Adrienne Rich "David's Boyhood"

Burning solace on his tongue - Lola Ridge "Firehead part I: He 3: The Light"

Upon her tongues of iron - Lola Ridge "Firehead part IV: The Stone 2: The Mother"

Stone-dust on his tongue - Lola Ridge "Firehead part V: Peter 2: The Vision of the Church"

The brazen, articulate tongues of the Iron - Lola Ridge "The Song of Iron"

Ballads of the trees in tongues unknown - Lola Ridge "Under-Song"

And a million tongues of madness rose singing - Lloyd Roberts "Runners of the Rain"

Silver tongues of waters where the willows blush - Lloyd Roberts "Spring's Singing"

Her pranks the favourite theme of every tongue - Samuel Rogers "Ginevra"

Wearing wild red roses on her tongue - Alison Rumfitt "Romance of Possible Contrasts"

A tongue of light describing a refuge - Rumi "A Just-Finished Candle" transl. by Coleman Barks

With tongues of argent fire and crimson shrouds - Herman George Scheffauer "The Masque of the Elements"

And tip with fateful coals the prophet's tongue - Herman George Scheffauer "The Masque of the Elements"

Sand upon the wind's tongue scouring - Ann K. Schwader "Horizon of the Aten"

A second obol secret beneath my tongue - Ann K. Schwader "Of Ithaca & Ice"

What tongue shall sing this truth? - Ann K. Schwader "The Queen's Speech"

With tongues of blood & faith & prophecy - Ann K. Schwader "Quiet in Her Mind"

Whose prophecies scrawl tongues of fire - Ann K. Schwader "Quiet in Her Mind"

Tongues of fire across our midnight sky - Ann K. Schwader "Quiet in Her Mind"

Tongues parched centuries past silence - Ann K. Schwader "Time Ghosts"

All of the tongues of the mountain - Clinton Scollard "The Hunter"

Old men of less truth than tongue - William Shakespeare "Sonnet XVII"

But lack tongues to praise - William Shakespeare "Sonnet CVI"

More wisdom than near tongues can make - Dora Sigerson Shorter "Distant Voices"

The color stunning your tongue - Patricia Smith "Prologue-- And Then She Owns You"

A steady tongue and half a dream - Patricia Smith "To 3, No One in the Place"

Speaking with 100 iron tongues - A.E. Stallings "Eurydice's Footnote"

Threw confusion on each tongue - James Stephens "Odell"

And diamonds were sticking to my tongue - James Stephens "What the Snake Saw"

In every tongue and meaning - Robert Louis Stevenson "The Song of Rahero: To Ori a Ori"

Placed a tulip on his tongue - May Swenson "The Blindman"

On the tender tongue of the little snakes - Algernon Charles Swinburne "The Triumph of Time"

The waves under my tongue - Mary Szybist "On Gravity"

If I had the tongues of angels, what would I say - Keith Taylor "Conditions"

Cannot bide your flattering tongue - "Three Knights from Spain"

Who wants the silver stripped from your tongue - Emma Trelles "Florida Poem"

The gray faces and their merciless tongues - Emma Trelles "How We Lived"

I screamed at them with a dry tongue - Tu Fu "The Wind-Torn Roof" transl. not credited [The Jade Flute, c.1960, Project Gutenberg]

A thorn was left in our tongues - Adil Tunyaz "But a Thorn Was Left in Our Tongues..." transl. by Aziz Isa Elkun

Taught my tongue to wound - Henry Vaughan "The Retreat"

My tongue is frozen in English - Pramila Venkateswaran "Body Language"

Braid the poisoned river and the lost tongues - Vanessa Angelica Villarreal "Malinche"

The tongue of unbridled nourishment - Ocean Vuong "Ode to Masturbation"

A question corroding his tongue - Ocean Vuong "Prayer for the Newly Damned"

These tongues of snow - Derek Walcott "Pentecost"

Your tongue would poison all honest merits - Johan Olof Wallin "The Angel of Death" transl. by August W. Almqvist

The crimson tongues of thundering cannon - Arthur Weir "Fleurs de Lys: The Captured Flag"

I will leave by instinct, my tongue intact - Andrea Werblin "Barrio with Sketchy Detail"

The honeyed music of her tongue - John Greenleaf Whittier "Snow-Bound"

In a medley of tongues - Ella Wheeler Wilcox "War: The Men-Made Gods"

Licked a bloodied paw with a nettle tongue - Fran Wilde "The Ghost Tide Chantey: High"

A tongue that never lies - Joseph R. Wilson "A Country Romance"

The bitterness buried itself in my tongue - Tanaya Winder "Becoming a Ghost"

On a tongue of hope - Nancy Wood "Beginning Time"

Fit his tongue to dialogues of business, love, or strife - William Wordsworth "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"

That brings the tongue to worship - Assetou Xango "Give Your Daughters Difficult Names"

Guilty by tongue but not by mind - Wendy Xu "Interim Poetics"

Move your tongue like the sea - Dr. Seema Yasmin "My Sister Teaches Me How to Ululate"

Tried to hold fire on our tongues - Dean Young "To Those of You Alive in the Future" [Poetry Oct. 2009]

Escape the iridescent tongues of evil - Veronica Zondek "cold fire 4" transl. by Katherine Silver

That numbs thought on the tongue - Veronica Zondek "cold fire 8" transl. by Katherine Silver

The spluttering of fierce tongues - Veronica Zondek "cold fire 17" transl. by Katherine Silver

Licked by tongues of silence - Veronica Zondek "cold fire 19" transl. by Katherine Silver


Adder-tongues in coats of gold - Bliss Carman "The Deserted Pasture"

Crown you double-tongued and quicksilver - Sonya Taaffe "Muse"

Where Macha's flame-tongued horses flee - Thomas Boyd "The King's Son"

Read the air for ghost-tongues - Kevin Goodan "Spot Weather Forecast"

Some loose-tongued prophet's meddling word - Don Marquis "The Sage and the Woman"

Sharp-tongued flame of death - Eugene A. Davidson "The Swift and Sharp-tongued Flame of Death"

Silent but silver-tongued - Sally Wen Mao "Occidentalism"

Do not press my tongue-tied patience - William Shakespeare "Sonnet CXL"

Come not trumpet-tongued from Heaven - Edith Wharton "Opportunities"

The wolf-tongued rapid howl - Duncan Campbell Scott "Home Song"


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