When I say Happy New Year,
I hear my grandmother’s voice
inside my voice, the way
she slapped the first syllable,
the way silence hung for a moment
before she finished the rest of the phrase.
HAP-py New Year!
Each time I say the words, she
is so alive in that moment—
the syllables themselves
wear her bright red nails,
her signature updo
and her rhinestone earrings.
HAP-py New Year!
I sing out again and again,
loving how she enters
each conversation this day.
There are small ways
to bring our beloveds back,
little rituals so strong they
defy the loss, so strong
that each time we do them
we become more and more
who we love. Her voice
becomes my voice and her
joy becomes my joy.
I don’t have to look in the mirror
to see she is here, her smile
my smile curving up from the inside.
Posts Tagged ‘language’
January 1
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, death, grandmother, language, loss, new years on January 2, 2021| 3 Comments »
Fluency
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, language, love on December 27, 2020| 3 Comments »
Stepping off the edge
I began to learn falling
as I would learn to speak
another tongue—
confused at first,
disoriented,
but now the thrill
as I notice
how the new
airy syntax
and unbound grammar
have changed
everything
about the way I think,
everything
about the way
I love.
Resolution
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, language, plant, poem, poetry, speaking, tree on January 2, 2020| 4 Comments »
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
—T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”
So let me speak this year in leaf,
and let me speak in stem.
Give me photosynthetic nouns
and algal interjections.
Let my syntax be made of phloem,
let my phonemes be blades of grass.
May all my conjunctions produce oxygen
may my prepositions be moss.
And let me mostly listen
with ears attuned to soil and root
And when I have words, let them be living,
may only the kindest words bear fruit.
From Pigs to the Dogs
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, pig, poem, poetry, sarcasm, science, tools on October 7, 2019| 2 Comments »
Priscilla the visayan warty pig
has learned to dig with a tool.
She digs with her nose, like all
other pigs, but then she’ll pick
up a stick or a scrap of bark
and use it to dig a hole.
It’s unprecedented—a pig
using a tool. And it gives me hope
that I, too, might evolve to acquire
something new—for instance,
an ability to understand sarcasm—
without which, studies say, I seem naïve.
Sarcasm, experts say, is most used
amongst people we love, despite the fact
that it comes from the Greek,
“to tear off flesh like dogs.”
Even a computer can comprehend
that sarcasm’s a tool for telling
true lies. So why am I so sincere?
Why does my right hemisphere not know
when “yeah, right” really means, “no way?”
Oh Priscilla, you inspiring visayan warty pig,
if you can evolve beyond your nature,
do you think perhaps I might? Yeah, right.
For more information about Priscilla and her science-tool-using prowess, visit https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/06/us/pigs-use-tools-study-scn-trnd/index.html
Translating my Father
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged father, language, love, poem, poetry on June 15, 2019| 5 Comments »
And when my dad said,
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,”
he meant, “I love you.”
And when he exclaimed,
“Christ on a bike,”
he meant, “I love you.”
And when he said,
“Turn off the TV,”
he meant, “Turn off the TV.”
And when he said,
“No,” I knew
he meant, “I love you.”
It was, in fact, easy
to translate, though sometimes
I didn’t like the native tongue.
But I felt that love in every word,
the love beyond syntax
love beyond lexicon,
love big enough to hold
us both for a lifetime
and then be passed on.
After a Friend Showed Me the Video About Koi No Yokan
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, koi no yokan, language, poem, poetry, spaces on January 26, 2019| 2 Comments »
with thanks to JT
all day leapfrogging
from known to known to known
missing the feelings between the feelings—
ten thousand mysterious spaces
waiting for us to fall in
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p05sn4xx/the-untranslatable-japanese-phrase-that-predicts-love
And Why Not Call It Miraculous?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, language, light, poem, poetry, transformation on June 17, 2018| 2 Comments »
Just as the sun enters the room
and changes the feel, the warmth,
and the power to perceive,
the right word, too,
can be a beam, can shine
into an evening, bring
glimmer, tidings of light,
make even the darkest corners
shine. Yes even one word
can become a prayer,
a gate we pass through
to find ourselves luminous.
Impossible to Wrap
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged adagio for strings, ars poetica, Christmas, gift, giving, language, poem, poetry on December 26, 2017| 6 Comments »
I want to give you words,
as if they might do what
the body can’t do—
as if with verb I could
meet the place in you
that most wants to be touched,
as if with noun I could
know the parts of you
that most want to be known.
I want to give you
the most faithful adjective,
the one that cradles you
before you even realize
that you need to be held—
once I heard a song
written by a man
for another man, a song
that swelled, then took
two steps back,
then swelled again, then
took two steps back
before finally rising
to an unsteady ledge
and my heart
beat outside of my body
and my eyes wept
with tears that were mine and not mine,
and I want to give you words
that will find every ache in you
that longs to be soothed,
words that will seek out
each lonely place, that will find
every branch of you—
not like a wind
that is here and gone, no, more like
the bark that gives everything
to protect you,
the bark that grows as you grow
and takes its shape from you.
Studying Spanish with My Son
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged adjectives, happiness, language, poem, poetry on December 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »
We begin with simple words.
Fat. Ugly. Good. Tall.
Gordo. Feo. Bueno. Alto.
How odd to break the world
into adjectives—
how human this longing
to describe a thing,
as if to explain it is to know it.
Easy. Big. Blonde.
Facil. Grande. Rubio.
I imagine a language
where instead of delineating
how different we are,
it had only shades of sameness.
Would we still find ways
to fight? To judge? To grade
and order and assess?
What if it were only ever a day—
not a good day, not a bad day,
just a day. And the woman—
not a fat woman, not a blonde woman,
just a woman—moved through that day
and met a man. Would they
be happier if they didn’t live
happily ever after, if they just lived,
their hearts not even knowing
you could fill in all that lovely silence
with adjectives and adverbs—
it would rain sometimes.
And the flowers would bloom.
Dinner would be served.
They would look in the mirror and smile.
Nocturne
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, night, poem, poetry on September 12, 2016| 1 Comment »
Even after everything is said
there is so much left unsaid.
I have measured the nights in stars
and lost track. I struggle to say
something true. When I stop
trying, I notice the how night
comes in and fills my throat.
Though no one can hear it,
it says everything I wish to say.
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