Grief as a Sharp Language and Tender/At War with Language

By Samuel Samba

Grief: As a sharp Language threading through us

 

Today, I wander far enough—till I'm witness to a Volkswagen ramming

into the signpost that un-alives a robber, as he dashes for the road.

 

the rough impact, uprooting him midair onto the hardground,

as though he weighed less than his story.

as if, this godless charade is all hard breath & costume.

 

in the wake of this event, my hands are plastered to yours.

which explains why I had witnessed the tremor, short circuit

round the walls of my brother's body & rushed like the next sigh

greeting the floor was his moan—tarnished into a last breath.

 

like the next object to fall would be his shadow before the robber's.

as a girl shreds her uniform & sprint into the highway

to secure safety over the tattered loin.

her arm: flagged into a halt.

 

I go knee-deep into the crisis, making a barricade off my jacket.

red, stewing out of a gash in his midriff—gutted with blood.

 

I shove a thumb towards the loamy-soft skin on his chest

searching for heartbeat, & it came back to me in trauma of lights.

I query his darkness & the bile spill up to vein, wrecking his bloodstream.

 

at the rough bend, car ululates their grievance.

& throttling on—approach us at slow pace.

 

once, as a teenager in Red Cross, I envisioned the needle as a sharp

language—threading through veins to witness blood wear a map over our loin.

bliss, carving out from a country of wound.

 

life, as we know speeds one way,

till a scenario shed so much light—it turns into accident.

 

on sighting an ambulance, I sidestep grief to meet my brother

gazing from a legible distance.

mind, thrown against the lack of silence.

& I starfish my palm, to feign innocence.

 

I reach for his hands: torn wild with trembling,

and said 'hold me, even when it is inconvenient.'

 

Tender//At War with Language

 

"your name, immigrating/ into another language where hurt

is easy/to pronounce" — Eric Yip

 

Pa's beautiful youth had him resolute—stuffing warm bright tea

into his lungs, & racing nine stairs down the hallway to defy the

long queue of pensioners, brooding over a wreck of a bus.

 

a glossary of literary terms starched to his breast pocket.

name it 'consistency', I'll prize each by its 'cons:

the way metaphor lives rent-free on his chest.

the way hyperbole exaggerates his walk steps.

 

the flashbacks, rearranging him in neat reverse.

 

his face lits at the wholesome thought of language,

as he mouths the disadvantage to dissonance.

 

holding the grammar to my lip, I fondle a rough note.

the alphabets—worrying my spit like an oat,

like English itself was a stirrable omen:

 

this wreck of vowel, handed to our lineage.

the slim weight of its inheritance rubberizing my gum.

ripened verb in brine-soaked font.

tongue, bruised to whitening.

 

I question the cruelty of shedding the native accent for

a brighter grammar. the hurt is in the asking.

so, I've mastered to leave my lips ajar hunting for dead decibel,

to grow thirsty with utterance.

 

I dream of our language going extinct—echo by re-echo.

the uncultured abecedary on my tongue, at war with blood.

 

Pa tells me, 'one day, you'd be more beautiful than my youth.

one day, this town would hold you tender'. & when I prod further

to have synonyms for 'Tender'—should this one grow extinct,

he tell me 'son, whatever word fashioned against you has ceased to be in vogue.'