Artwork by Olive Hannigan
Qui te chantera dans la langue de ta mère
Et que poussera de ses os sous la terre?
They laid her concave
at the base of south mountain,
where her tongue still bleeds from her bones.
Magyarul from marrow,
sleeping without cease, seeping
without slumber,
and what will become of it?
What dreams, born of her dust?
What words, chained, a stone
washed back in a throat
long since stoppered up,
unraveled?
Did she think that they —
babies in a bathtub —
would uphold her langue,
her legacy?
Those babies sleep beside her now,
in their monolingual dream-time, what then
when they can’t understand
a word she says?
Who to rage to, what to rage
against?
This is a loss
known by legions of the untongued,
this is a shout- this-
THIS-
And now, come creeping, see what aims
to collect. See the scraps
it scratches for. can it taste
old-country thickness
conjugations slick and bitter — too many “K”s,
accent-blunted “O”s
in its own
clammy
mouth?
Between those teeth, is my name
but backwash
brined from waves away,
and too many years,
and dead women?
If it peels back
the dates, number
at a time – egy, kilenc, hét, kettő —
will it revive
not her caky heart, but
her longing?
(Dieu au ciel knows
my mother tried, but I-)
(but I-)
But she doesn’t know me
at all.
Julianna Reidell is a Senior English and French major at Arcadia University. Her work can be found in Moss Puppy Magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, For Page and Screen, Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine, and former issues of Quiddity, among others.