The Way My Mother Speaks - by
I say her phrases to myself
in my head
or under the shallows of my breath,
restful shapes moving.
The day and ever. The day and ever.
language
Old Tongue - by
When I was eight, I was forced south. Not long after, when I opened my mouth, a strange thing happened. I lost my Scottish accent. Words fell off my tongue: eedyit, dreich, wabbit, crabbit stummer, teuchter, heidbanger, so you are, so am ur, see you, see ma ma, shut yer geggie or I’ll gie you […]
Poem Inspired by a Gaelic Topography of Balquhidder Parish: Rev. Alex MacGregor, EUP 1886 - by
Field of the land producing thatch
/ Shieling of grinding wheat
/ Burn beside the dun coloured dell
/ Burn of the mournful bleat
/
/ Burn of the…
The Water - by
River names are the oldest,
/ the first things in a landscape.
/ So many times they simply mean The Water.
/
/ And the ones we…
Hinniewaff - by
Nae wird means fragrance in the Scots
/ though mony a wird means stink
/ the’r fum an wheech an bowfin
/ an steuch, it gars…
Echo & Elixir 5 - by
Maybe love is a walk to astonishment.
/ Or a ship stranded on the shore of oblivion.
/ The infinity in the atom,
/ the treasures…
from A – Z - by
Remember the time when a man from the north
/ Wrote a letter received by a man from the south
/ And the second…
Alphabet - by
Ten million years
/ from the Miocene
/ to the primary school in Ječná Street.
/
/ We know everything
/ from a to z.
/
/ But sometimes the finger stops
/ in…
Taalmachine - by
1
/
/ Spreek, staad, spreek!
/ Strek je talloos veel tongen ten hemel,
/ lik aan de regen looi in de zon,
/ proef, proef het puin, stad,…
The Académie Française Considers a Word for ‘Dogging’ - by
Chiennage, a literal response, is cast aside,
/ its laziness the thin end of the wedge, reminder
/ that the Anglophones are twenty miles…
I Love the Sun-Baked Taste of Armenian Words - by
I love the sun-baked taste of Armenian words,
/ their lament like ancient lutes, the bend
/ of blood-red flowering roses in the…
from Approaches to How They Behave - by
1
/
/ What does it matter if the words
/ I choose, in the order I choose them in,
/ Go out into a silence I…