Metonymy, us Poem by Ann Cotten

I'll speak for you, so hush.
Shut up, I say. Come now,
come on, be calm, I say, I'll do the words
and when I'm done we can climb in together.

Writing, you say, it really tires you out.
I'm more exhausted just from saying 'I', say I.
Spread out your pronoun, it can mean us two
and then we'll have a picknick on it. Really.

The word has trouble passing through my teeth,
my jaws will tend to clamourously jar
when you mean me and I mean you, and grinning
in silence churns our bosoms into harmony,
we ask: shall we? You say: I would,
what about you? when our teeth meet.

Fill up the glasses! Merum will keep us
behind the bushes and out of harm's way
all afternoon, making wild passes
that spill tannin on what's inside our faces,

caught up until the trees begin to tip,
mixing the alphabet up in our eyes,
as we guess on, trying to figure out
whose name it is we're cutting in the tree

trunk, using my knife. 'Cause yours is much too small
and switches back when used at the wrong angle.
And as I grave the last letter of 'YOU',
you, seriously: 'Look!' You've written 'ELVIS'.

Right. So we make mistakes. But something's laughing
at our attempts, I think it is the tree.