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 Karen
Kovacik directs Creative Writing at Indiana University Purdue
University Indianapolis. She spent the 2004-05 academic year in
Warsaw, translating contemporary Polish women's poetry. Her
latest book of poems is Metropolis Burning (Cleveland State,
2005).
Return to the Mother Tongue (After a Month of Polish)
I'm back in my language, beyond the gilt
deckle of the king-sized dictionary,
past "May I?" and "Please." I've cast off the silk
muzzle of sibilants, stopped rationing
words like rosary beads or martyring
myself on unforgiving verbs. I'm through
with ankle-length dresses, averted eyes.
I'm back to demanding, my tongue a burr
instead of a velvet-tipped begonia,
I'm back to bitchiness and bravado,
no sin or syntax too abstruse. So what
if I belch adjectives or spill nouns down
the front of my dress? I'm back to shooting
straight, cutting up, letting prepositions
fizz up over my glass to be savored
by my naked tongue. I'm back in English,
language that could never keep a budget,
language with a straining waistband, lover
of karaoke, maracas and borscht.
I'm back in Chicago, hallelujah!
Now I will talk you under the table,
now I will decide how long and how hard.
If my grandfather had not emigrated from Silesia
I would have been born between Auschwitz and Krakow
My first vowels would've been nasal
my first consonants a grafting of whisper and cherry
The nearest city would be two blue buses away
but I wouldn't think of leaving
The uncles would teach me morels and red currants
The aunts would bottle yellow plums on a wood stove
and stew hens whose necks I had snapped with practiced hands
I would dream of sliced beets in their lovely fuchsia lake
I would pack a rabbit in my mother's purse
then at a neighbor's undo the clasp and up would pop
the checkered ears, the still, pink eye
At twelve, I would visit a dentist for the first time
The loud pain would make me cry
but afterwards my smile would be pretty and gold
A bible and 1940s album of Stalin
would be my only books
I would memorize that mustachioed face, poreless
as an actor's on a movie poster, eyes glassy
as my rabbit’s, and fall asleep with the strange man's arms
open on the slippery pages
The city teachers would whisper about me
Blushing, I would struggle with their questions
posed in the quick, sharp tones of the capital
The other children would call me dunce, baboon
and after school, I would walk home alone
fast on the yellow days of fall, then later
slow over frozen mud, and at my lane
I’d salute the storks atop the lamp pole in their nest
brown and deep-brimmed as a fancy lady's hat
Credits:
"Return to the Mother Tongue" originally appeared in West
Branch. "If my grandfather..." was originally published in
Mudfish.
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