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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
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      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
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      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
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      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
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      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
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  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
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      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
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    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
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    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
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    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
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  • Issue #25 Spring 2023
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      • David Carter Spring 2023
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    • Issue #25 Poetry Spring 2023 >
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      • M. Cynthia Cheung Spring 2023
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      • Rita Feinstein Spring 2023
      • Dan Fliegel Spring 2023
      • Lisa Higgs ​Spring 2023
      • Dennis Hinrichsen ​Spring 2023
      • Mara Jebsen ​Spring 2023
      • Abriana Jetté ​Spring 2023
      • Letitia Jiju ​Spring 2023
      • E.W.I. Johnson ​Spring 2023
      • Ashley Kunsa ​Spring 2023
      • Susanna Lang ​Spring 2023
      • James Fujinami Moore Spring 2023
      • Matthew Murrey Spring 2023
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2023
      • Heather Qin ​Spring 2023
      • Wesley Sexton ​Spring 2023
      • Ashish Singh ​Spring 2023
      • Sara Sowers-Wills ​Spring 2023
      • Sydney Vogl ​Spring 2023
      • Elinor Ann Walker Spring 2023
      • Andrew Wells Spring 2023
      • Erin Wilson Spring 2023
      • Marina Hope Wilson ​Spring 2023
      • David Wojciechowski Spring 2023
      • Jules Wood Spring 2023
      • Ellen Zhang Spring 2023
      • BJ Zhou Spring 2023
      • Jane Zwart Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Fiction Spring 2023 >
      • Eleonora Balsano Spring 2023
      • Callie S. Blackstone Spring 2023
      • Daniel Deisinger Spring 2023
      • CL Glanzing Spring 2023
      • Janine Kovac Spring 2023
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      • Richie Zaborowske Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Nonfiction Spring 2023 >
      • Kalie Johnson Spring 2023
      • Amanda Roth Spring 2023

Carlo Matos & Amy Sayre Baptista

Letters from The Book of Tongues
​

Note: These four collaborative epistolary poems are from Matos and Sayre Baptista’s manuscript The Book of Tongues. The characters in these letters are based on the actual historical figures of Prince Pedro, his lover, Inês, and his wife, Constança. Theirs is a gruesome story of betrayal, murder, and a post-death coronation, which is considered to be one of the greatest love stories in Portuguese history.

Pedro,
 
No, my love, the sting on your tongue is promises splintered, not wasps. And your
slivered agonies grow ragged against my flesh. Those of us in the grave have ample time
to think. Has a lover, a woman kept, ever been so unkindly cut? Abandoned for hawk
and hunt, has ever a Queen been so darkly uncrowned? Tell me, do the children now
call my executioner, uncle? For he shall live longer in their world than I. Do not speak to
me of first women, or fruit you find distasteful. Ghosts learn all their lessons late. And
who shall tell my daughters that disobedience is the only lesson of survival? Who shall
tell my daughters of me? The wasps? The nightingale dead on the sill? And when you
speak of stings and promises, of wings stripped away from what might have flown, know
I have made oaths of my own, from the center of a ribcage, stark white and choiring with
maggots. Here is what my song sings: a man must answer for all his misplaced paradises.
 
Always and forever,
 
Inês


Letters from The Book of Tongues


Pedro,
 
When I arrived at court with your future wife, I remember thinking I didn’t quite
understand your weather. It didn’t take me long to get hooked on you, it’s true, but not
in the way everyone thinks. You weren’t much of a fisherman though you styled yourself
quite the hunter. It was more like a dagger sheath snagged all night on an elegant dress or
a ring pulling by the nose: a cow to market, a handful of magic beans, a cloying of talons
and feathers and a flying from the pieces. You were not a bitter man but lost, though not
in the same way I lost myself at the end of a long day before the ordinary accusations of
parenthood cut jagged the pattern of night. How many nights did I sing away the boogey
man from our roof? You had the look of a man who had passed out and come to honeyed,
mosquitoed, and itching for a word that means “to buckle,” but instead of a word there
was a pair of parenthesis, my arms, a shape without content or contest. When you flinched
into our first kiss, I buried my voice in you so you’d have a night song for when the ice
cracked at your marital bed, frigid even in the humid summer months. I remember there
was winter in your kiss but also fear, a fear like snow closing the roads: confounding,
abashed, and innocent. For we were really winter birds unsure of ourselves in summer, our
voices made of sterner stuff.
 
Always and forever,
 
Inês


Letters from The Book of Tongues


Inês,
 
A prince does as he must. Things required. Things expected. Constança fit a prince’s duty
and I wore her as fitted garment. As my wife, she never questioned my duty but said you
were the unraveling of my honor, the tugged seam from which we all were undone. Unto
her own death, she felt you had brought a plague on our offspring, that your sons would
king her own. But you, my love, gave voice to the old myth, you showed the emperor had
no clothes at all. I was naked before you. And when she died and you were finally to be my
bride, her ghost must have been laughing. You said worry is nothing but the dead jesting
at the living. Remember how you burned the bed sheets upon which she slept? How you
salted the steps of the men who carried her body to the grave? God knows I believed
your magic. Perhaps you were right to question my promises. Perhaps I cursed you while
wishing for her death. When the cough in her chest turned persistent, I was ambivalent.
I did not wish her dead, but I wished her gone. A man is meant to complete his wife’s
inequalities with his mistress’ talents, but your shadow shaped my dissatisfaction. Your
absence taught me longing. Contança died in my affections long before her body began to
fail her. The day they came for you I was deep in the woods, three times I heard her death
rattle in those hours before her death. Her ghost there in the forest. Her rasping breath, a
mimic for the sword’s falling arc upon your neck.
 
Forever and always,
 
Pedro


Letters from The Book of Tongues


Constança,
 
Dearest queen, of all who were in my life, there was no one I felt sorrier to disappoint.
And I am grateful you forgave me at your death. But not until my own did I learn the
lessons you tried to teach. Yours was the regal visage I died to achieve. You who taught
me to read star charts and recognize constellations, saying a woman must understand
navigation, a woman must know what moves in the world and how. You had walked
through the Lion’s mouth alive. One cold night in April, we stood on the balcony outside
your bedroom. You cut a fig and fed me half, your fingers salty with sweet flesh against
my lips. Then you pointed to the brightest star in the sky. I asked if its light was why the
others clustered so close. You said, the human eye is deceitful, as is the space between
stars—the distance between them is like forgiveness, farther, farther, and darker than we
ever imagined.
 
Yours,
 
Inês



--
Carlo Matos has published ten books, including The Quitters (Tortoise Books) and It’s Best Not to Interrupt Her Experiments (Negative Capability Press). His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in such journals as Another Chicago Magazine, Rhino, One, and Handsome, among many others. He currently lives in Chicago, IL, is a professor at the City Colleges of Chicago, and is a former MMA fighter and kickboxer.

Amy Sayre Baptista’s first chapbook is the winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition and is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. Her writing has appeared in The Best Small Fiction Anthology, Ninth Letter, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among other journals. She performs with Kale Soup for the Soul, a Portuguese-American artists collective, and is a co-founder of Plates&Poetry, a community table program focused on food and writing.

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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022
  • Issue #25 Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Art Spring 2023 >
      • David Carter Spring 2023
      • Annabel Jung Spring 2023
      • Ryota Matsumoto Spring 2023
      • Leah Oates Spring 2023
      • Eve Ozer Spring 2023
      • Emily Rankin Spring 2023
      • Esther Yeon Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Poetry Spring 2023 >
      • Emma Bolden Spring 2023
      • Ronda Piszk Broatch Spring 2023
      • M. Cynthia Cheung Spring 2023
      • Flower Conroy Spring 2023
      • Jill Crammond Spring 2023
      • Sandra Crouch Spring 2023
      • Satya Dash Spring 2023
      • Rita Feinstein Spring 2023
      • Dan Fliegel Spring 2023
      • Lisa Higgs ​Spring 2023
      • Dennis Hinrichsen ​Spring 2023
      • Mara Jebsen ​Spring 2023
      • Abriana Jetté ​Spring 2023
      • Letitia Jiju ​Spring 2023
      • E.W.I. Johnson ​Spring 2023
      • Ashley Kunsa ​Spring 2023
      • Susanna Lang ​Spring 2023
      • James Fujinami Moore Spring 2023
      • Matthew Murrey Spring 2023
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2023
      • Heather Qin ​Spring 2023
      • Wesley Sexton ​Spring 2023
      • Ashish Singh ​Spring 2023
      • Sara Sowers-Wills ​Spring 2023
      • Sydney Vogl ​Spring 2023
      • Elinor Ann Walker Spring 2023
      • Andrew Wells Spring 2023
      • Erin Wilson Spring 2023
      • Marina Hope Wilson ​Spring 2023
      • David Wojciechowski Spring 2023
      • Jules Wood Spring 2023
      • Ellen Zhang Spring 2023
      • BJ Zhou Spring 2023
      • Jane Zwart Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Fiction Spring 2023 >
      • Eleonora Balsano Spring 2023
      • Callie S. Blackstone Spring 2023
      • Daniel Deisinger Spring 2023
      • CL Glanzing Spring 2023
      • Janine Kovac Spring 2023
      • Jeremy T. Wilson Spring 2023
      • Richie Zaborowske Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Nonfiction Spring 2023 >
      • Kalie Johnson Spring 2023
      • Amanda Roth Spring 2023