Literacy
Michael Meyerhofer
I was terrified of pronouncing shirt
as shit, rap as rape, and most of all, beast
as breast, having already seen what happened
to those who committed such wrongs
in a world where just one letter separates
laughter from slaughter, when the sole way
to avoid ending up like a rain-whipped
sapling under thunderheads of grade school
ridicule was to worship the difference
between rectal and recital, to mouth
each syllable like a prayer—dust to dust,
firehose to firehouse, astray to ashtray.
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