Analysis of "Mouth: To Say" by Lisa Ampleman

I looked up "colon usage" and found this article "A Guide to Using Colons".  For me, I normally associate the usage of colons to set up a connection between lists and the concept before, for example, "Things I like: bread, eggs, and sleep."  But for the title of this poem, "Mouth: To Say," has more of a different feel to it -- separating what the mouth does versus words to say.

"To say a word, we put it in our mouths. / It may roll between the teeth / or hum on the plate [...]" note how the adjusted lines decrease the speed of reading the poem for me as though the reader has to tread on each line slowly like a staircase.  With this in mind, the clinical way on how to say a word is offset with the line adjustments.

"Love, after all, starts / on tongue against teeth and ends on lips."  For me, I'm focusing on the italicized word of "love" but my own personal background and definition of "Love" and focus on how it's said.  There's something sensual and close with how the "tongue goes against the teeth and ends on the lips."  This line feels like foreshadowing -- look at the "physical" way of the word.

"To communicate once meant to take communion. / I take the wafer in my mouth: / speech. Silence as it melts on my tongue."  The line that speaks out is the last line here of "speech. Silence as it melts on my tongue" because of how the line break creates a contrast of sound and a hard to visualize image of silence and melting.  Add into this the reference to a religious ritual of communion, and the more and more I look at how to experience and say language.

"Your speaking hums in your chest / when my ear is to it."  At this point, I'm interested in how intimate and personally the speaker explores the way to say words.  Just like how to say "love" feels intimate.

"There's a wasp nest / under my porch.  They fly home at dusk, / but you know how to sus them out."  I wasn't thinking of how these words were said, but I feel these images are personal and an intimate look of a part of a relationship.  The speaker identifying what is going on, the implies, a wasp nest the "you" able to find the actual -- the wasps.

     And in my kitchen, plaster cracks on

one discolored wall.  Is it water damage?

     Is the house settling?  You put your hand

on my wall, say It doesn't look like water--

     (water, which begins on pursed lips).

These lines feels like application of what's going on with the poem: looking at how words are said (which is done on the last line and focusing on intimate parts), the expansion of this relationship of the speaker identifying what's going on, and the "you" identifying what it is or rather isn't in this case, "It doesn't look like water--"  However, this time the lines play out as a scene with exposition about discolored walls in the kitchen and what I thought was internal monologue at first but is more dialogue with the with the speaker and the other.  In either case the speaker is asking the question.

Old me said the last line is "projected narcissism," and yeah I can see that reading -- mouth / mouth.  But the last lines has the reader focuses on the tactile, "The glass of water we share is cold."  

Also with "The cracked pipe in the wall seals up."  There's a sense of a metaphorical closure which parallels this kiss.  But I feel the poem trying to separate the image as the image with the last line, "You kiss my mouth, which tastes like your mouth."   There's a separation on how words are said, the current meaning, the history, and the intimate.