After M. NourbeSe Philip’s “Discourse on the Logic of Language”
Creole is a daughtertongue, a cousintongue
but there’s an armed warden on duty inside my mouth
he swings at all my
sentences. What emerges is a resuscitated corpse of a
lan lan l/an/guage/anguish subordinate to a main clause as if to a Luna on a tall,
tall horse.
Just by speaking I am syn/tax/axe/d into another generation of comma-shaped
grandmothers curling over the earth whose love may go untran
Slated from the music of their work.
To be thus unintelligible means to be left not under
Stood by intelligence. As if intelligence is some kind of opposite of what the body senses.
But I understand aching
sugar cane hips aching pineapple spines
to be the original points of under
standing. I under
Stand Luna
was not always Hawaiian for boss.
I have / have I convinced people that such a warden is my trust Worthy
Translator? They think that what I say is what the meaning of me is.
Sword has sw sw s/word in it threatens the word war in
So please try
to do more than hear me.
My voice may go up in arms at times but I don’t desire to fight any more of you. any more
with you. any more. with you, more with you. More with you.
Kalani Padilla (they/she) is a Filipino-American and Kama’aina poet from Mililani, Hawai’i. Kalani holds degrees in English, Film & Visual Narratives (B.A.) and Theology (M.A.) from Whitworth University in Spokane, WA. Currently, Kalani tends home in Missoula, Montana — an MFA candidate, pastry chef, river rat, and yogi. Kalani’s poems and short stories can be found Bamboo Ridge Press, Waxwing, Waterwheel, Figure 1, and with the Academy of American Poets — as well as in various, nondescript public bathroom stalls across the Intermountain West region.
