Symbol Analysis
Tongue: it's more than a weird meat dish that's making a comeback in fancy restaurants. It's the dominant symbol of this poem.
Essentially, any mention of the speaker's tongue here is a reference to language—either native or foreign. The word "language," though, loses a sense of the intimacy and importance that these words hold for our speaker. The way she speaks—the way we all speak, really—is a crucial component of identity. This symbol lets us know that our language is a just a much a part of us as those pink, fleshy things that we carry around in our mouths.
- Lines 1-2: Our speaker is responding to a request for clarification. It's as though her figurative use of "tongue" has thrown her audience for a loop.
- Lines 4-7: By using "tongue" as a stand-in for language, the speaker can build an extended metaphor in which speaking two languages becomes as awkward and uncomfortable as having two tongues in your mouth, one that seems lost to you and one that you can't really ever "know."
- Lines 10-14: If you have to use the foreign tongue, goes our speaker's argument, then you'll eventually have to spit out your mother tongue, which has rotted away from disuse. Eww. This unpleasant image emphasizes our speaker's distress at losing her native language.
- Lines 33-35: Now that the native tongue is growing back (see "Imagery: Plants"), it can tie the foreign tongue in knots and push it aside. Again, this is a figurative way of saying that the native language is now in charge. Folks can't really tie their tongues in knots—well, except for maybe Gene Simmons.