Published in Issue 62.3: Summer 2023
In poetry seminars, we scooped goat cheese & zaytoon with naan
bread. Or was it pita? Lahmacun or Pantoum? We pantalooned with non
guzzles: without takhalus, qafiyah, without the leftover
call of the radif. Was erasure solely of the tennis net when we saloned without radif?
When it became obvious غ was missing from the smorgasbord,
I took a guttural roll call and its voice guttered like a motorbike
on a cold morning: Here! Revving in my throat, still inside me.
The sounds we make home us but how do those we can’t, dispossess?
Sure— the chagrin of American undergrads over erres
unrolled. An artist described how Tamils were identified for slaughter
in the Sri Lankan Civil War if they erred
when forced to pronounce the Sinhalese word for bucket.
In the auditorium, my tongue effortlessly mouthed “baldiya”
though it wasn’t in my tongue. Whose side did that put me on?
During villanelle week a girl put my hand on her mouth
so I could feel the V vibrating there. Pronouncing V became easier
though I remain deaf to its sound. From Americans I learned
to march brazenly forward even when your senses betray you.
In seminar someone said “modern reader” but I heard “moderator.”
There’s also truth in that. Still how weary I felt walking home without radif.
HASSAAN MIRZA is a writer from Lahore, Pakistan. He is an incoming Stegner Fellow in fiction and a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati.
