Vocabulary
–Neil Hilborn
I hear that in Hungarian they don’t
say “Go to hell” but rather “I hope

I’m there when your children decide
they don’t need you anymore.” In Scotland

the popular greeting is “Have you eaten
the heart of the mountain?” In America we should

say “You must leave town at midnight” for both
Yes and no, but we don’t have the balls, which should

only be an adjective for cheese and lightning,
I’m sorry. If there’s a word for the slight glow

of a lightbulb after you’ve turned it off, I don’t
want to know it. There should be a way to say “Fuck you”

that’s actually sexy. I hear the ancient Egyptians
would spread crocodile dung on sandstone tablets,

and when they scraped it off, there were the words.
The word for tomorrow was a stork, flying away.

What’s the word for a place that you loved,
a window seat, a garden, a house of stone,

a wall in a field you were carried to on the wind,
that, when you look for it again, is gone.

Photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash