Mother Tongue Turns

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. 

About the Author

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.