Indigestion

Written by Emery Roberts, with support from the DAC Team

It took getting the hiccups four times in an hour to believe you when you said that I eat too fast,  

  and learn too slow. 

And I know it’d be best if I flip them around,  
but here’s the trouble: 

Mine is a palate tuned to every new word that tingles  
down my arm, traced in the air like a spider spell 
as I swish the body of the thought between my teeth and tongue 
And decide if I want to gulp it down. 

If I try to chug information,  
The woolly substance of it  
catches in my throat and sticks  
like lard 
Till a kind of cerebral indigestion—concepts callow misspeled and  
muddled—  
Carbonates  
Forth in a stream of nonsense  
and I find I cannot follow what I’m saying.  

(The way you stare at me tells me that you can’t either.) 

In those moments, with bile in my throat, I think that maybe,  
you were wrong 
that, maybe,  
I might prefer to learn slow.