Speaking on the Mother Tongue
Jose Alvarez Escontrela
I have acquired my hood to cover
all the nuances of my past tongue,
now forsaken in the past tense
of those who remember a bright time.
Now I speak with the gristle of a language
on top of the gristle of a language,
on top of the gristle of a language,
there’s not real meat attached to the bone
of the core structure of my words.
There’s a sound of the forgotten words
trying to climb through my spine into my throat
and beyond. Then they clash into my new words,
in this new foreign land where there are not
silly little lines on top of words to mark pronunciation,
where some letters are discarded
and the ñ is not on sight.
Now I speak for those who inhabit two worlds,
with a field broken in two sides by silence
and with words leaking into each half.
Confused by the pronunciation and tenses,
trying to find my rock to stand straight
and see in the perched field where to put my next step.
