onomatopoeia

onomatopoeia

i choose my destinations because i like the name,

sitting crosslegged with a glass of whiskey,

idly tracing my fingers along maps,

sounding out strange syllables, ill-fitting on my lips;

imagining places to fit the name.

some paint themselves effortlessly,

fricatives like whispers, curling through alleyways,

sliding tendrils down my cheekbones to murmur in my ear;

other consonants abrupt like jagged corners,

or smooth as cobblestones, names worn soft in uncountable mouths.

i sound them out silently, tracing my tongue against my teeth,

sliding along my palate and choking in my throat,

until they're half familiar,

faces you know you've met before, but their eyes never linger on you.

i like the places i know nothing about except the vowels and the consonants,

and try them on like scarves,

experimenting with intonations, they way they feel under my skin,

and i am absurd, i know, dreaming of diphthongs,

as though they will tell me the rhythm of rivers or the arias of wind,

as though the crackling of snow under my feet is hidden in strange alphabets,

and i wonder, absurdly, how accurate i am.

some cities fit their phonology so closely, the history is almost palpable,

centuries of lives lived inside them, speaking them and shaping them,

lengthening the vowels in laments,

or the sounds of battle, orders barked in the streets,

still linger in clipped syllables,

guttural consonants jumbled in the throat, unrecognizable.

others feel like they've been said with a smile so many times,

they fit in the mouth like home,

places where the sounds have stretched themselves back out again,

shaped into something new, covered in scars and whole.

sighisoara, i whispered to myself, wandering the old town, still guarded by medieval walls,

and i can't pronounce it, but i hear it, as clearly in the wind as in the souvenir stalls,

sadness and safety entwined until unseparable.

sighisoara, i wonder what it means.

ushuaia yearns like patagonia, the tierra del fuego softened by the snow;

bukhara, said slowly, echoes ancient merchants in its ancient streets,

tired and dusty from samarkand, trudging the silk road.

even in marrakech, in the jemaa al-fnaa, loud and ripe with snake charmers and souvenirs,

in moments of silence, the breath before the midday prayer,

millenia of voices chant the name in the alleys,

just beyond the next turn, marrakech, marrakech, marrakech.

and i still know that i am absurd, that i look for poetry where there is none,

ascribe meaning to the meaningless, anything to fill the cracks;

dreaming of another life, of other names,

i imagine, absurdly, wandering the streets, looking for something familiar.