The Iowa Review
Volume 33
Issue 3 Winter 2003-2004
2003
The Expletion of Tan
Bruce Beasley
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Beasley, Bruce. "The Expletion of Tan." The Iowa Review 33.3 (2003): 117-119. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol33/iss3/28
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Article 28
BEASLEY
BRUCE
The Expletion of Tan
our speech
its lack & toward
Tan. Tan. Paul Broca hunted
in 1861, through
down,
in a man who,
its fissure
could
say only
since age twenty,
tan, tan, tan-tan, tan & an
obscenity
Broca never
Expletive.
Tan-tan.
reported. Tan.
man
A
Leborgne
called Tan aphasie in a French clinic
& when he died Broca saved his brain
tan
in alcohol, & found tan tan expletive
in the left lobes, & lesioned
it shrunken
of Sylvius to the Sulcus
a serum
In its third convolution,
from the Fissure
of Roland.
filled egg-sized depression,
neurosyphilitic
locule. & around that fissure he found the brain's
clusters
Tan.
Tan.
of language & speech.
Tan.
Tan-Tan-Tan.
& so Broca planted his name
on that region of speech, on that
brand of aphasia
Region Broca's
Broca's
117
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of Tan-Tan)
(The Expletive
Aphasia
Broca died of an aneuyrism
in his brain ex
pletive tan tan-tan tan & what
did those fissures of Tan-Tan's
locution
hold what
rhythms
of tan what
triple
punc
tations
of pause between
that one shrunk syllable's
expletion of all other words
"The meaningless
syllable
Tan" Medieval
Tannin.
bark. Cortex:
Shredded
Latin
Bark of the brain's
stripped
Hospital,
tannum.
Latin
Tanbark.
for bark.
half
tree. In the Macon
in the icu,
I came from the Boy Scout
to see
jambouree
my father, stroke-ridden,
for the last time & hear
his
last words,
but a gutteral
118
not words
lung-deep when he heard
me speak his name, a grunt
that grew louder & more
till I fled that room?
Now
urgent
he calls me
sometimes,
up, in sleep,
& the operator-static
J am required by federal
to inform you you are receiving
whistles
law
a call from someone known
to be deceased, & I hear
that desperate-to-connect
bark again, that
gnarl of syllable
peeled off
its meaning
& growing shriller
(Tan Tan Tan Tan Tan)
to carry off throat & glottis
& tongue what the left brain's
stripped bark knows, & doesn't
know how to tell it knows
?&
I crush
that phone
in my
hand.
119