I first met language
above
the earlobe.
It hummed like a distant
generator,
because ours was out of
petrol. It went:
gharghargharghar
before cracking open
into a word:
ghar, my home.
I sun: I listen, I am
numb. An action
born from within
my inability to act.
In language I had two
mothers teach me about
tone and precision.
*
Suna: to make listen.
So listen if I split
a word in half, send it
across borders, if it finds
a suffix, and transforms
to meaning: in my mouth
it has a ghar
with no
slanted walls.
Italicized words may look
like a bird flying,
but words are still rigid.
Sentences are sutured mid-air
then fall
down on a page,
swatted flies no longer
shifting in silence
between memory and moment.
*
Tell me, does my split
tongue make me
a snake In your garden?
Will you sunnaofy me
at the sound
of my non-words?
At the hodgepodge of
my generator? Sunnaofy:
to yell at
or to lecture. Yet
the hyphen has always
been a site
of mutual de
-construction, where
languages untie their
robes, let fall their names,
naked now
with fingers interlacing.
