Spring 2022 | Sarah Sassoon Reads "Mother – Tongue" – MQR Sound
Sarah Sassoon reads their poem, "Mother – Tongue," from MQR's Spring 2022 issue.
the language I come from has no mother so what if I don’t have a mother tongue that rolls off my lips Arabic Hebrew English never quite reaching my mouth spoken over my head I was the seed rotting in the lucky country new roots words stresses my mother had no idea she was marrying can you have a tongue without a mother my mother never spoke to me except to ask for chamomile tea a hot water bottle or to turn the heater up warm cold truths the truth mother’s tongue is heavy with metered mistakes her mother lost her Judeo-Arabic son in the refugee camp pit burying her tongue with his small body it’s no wonder God has no mother this world mouthed into being broken
For more from the Spring 2022 special issue of MQR, “Decades of Fire: New Writing from the Middle East and North Africa,” you can purchase the issue here.
