poem in progress

so, i'm working on this poem
and i really care about the chunks in it but can't seem to get past this
what i've got here (blurted, not quite reading)
would love any reactions/comments/help
to glue it together
or unzip it

(also the linebreaks and spacing got a mess)

Emma taught me the word
onomotopeia, she said, woof,
she said through chewed lips
streaked in horizontal teeth marks
like there was something to be held
before the chap

the small breath of the o’s from her lips
sending flurries in small tufts
of the curve of her hair, wet
segments orange estranged
from one another,
falling in front of her chin
the last two inches a wave
before her jaw bone

meow, Emma said, her small bones closer
to the animal than the sound

Emma taught me how
to make sounds with lexis,
dictionary in hand at twelve years
and yesterday announced she was a lesbian
her mother called long-distance on a landline

meow, Emma said, ring, ring
I am still not sure if my seventeen year old cousin
is suddenly sexual or if her lips smack when she kisses,
if she is gentle in sound, unlike an animal
and wants to hear the future, birth wise

in the female minds of this family theories ripen long in gossip
duplicity of hearing in which you can thank

and hear a wedding
over Chinese dumplings,
still remember
to pass the
granulated

the female minds here reach horizontal for sound
perhaps because we live too long, outlast our spouses
and our singing voices, though I can’t point quite
to when I fell behind
on that

I haven’t heard Emma’s voice since she could meow
and qualify as a child
but now she is a lesbian who
creaks slightly over the phone
in sweatered winter celebrations
older than when Emma shoved
her face in puppy flesh,
the brave cousin
that had us all barking
down the stairwell feet first

Emma taught me the word
onomotopeia, her high pitched voice
skinny legs, she leaned into the “meow”
shrill, firm-mouthed

I worried her calves would snap
cracking staggered midbone
if they got too close to
a right angle with her thighs

I saw Emma last screeching sounds
and now she is talking sex talk in my mind
I wonder if there are animals in it

if she chirps or maybe ahs silently
or whispers fuck me into the snow
like a puppy or a cousin who stubbed her toe
three seconds before turkey in 1992

they say Emma may love women or sound, or both
they say she’s down to monosyllables
so perhaps she loves the clarity of line

shadow, plop, sucking sounds
a stone into a pond

where the last three words
complete, fold her body inward
and wait for a frog

onomatopoeia, Emma licks haiku