Enter Home Planet News Poetry of Issue #2                        Page 16
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MOROCCAN OPERATION
after Paul Bowles

I'm in Morocco
a country I've never visited
out of fear for my tongue

the tongue is the body part
I don't want to lose
to any mute who wants his tongue back

there's no way to say what's missing
no one knows my language
I need to put it in writing
for a fortune teller's mynah bird
in Marrakesh

soon the new moon
will signal the start of Ramadan
and I'll look up at it
speechless in Arabic

         David Gershator