The Ways Our Languages Reveal Difference
by Marilee Goad
In the kitchen, I swivel my ㄱ into a g and say
let’s make gimbap, which your friend might
call sushi, which is and is not an accurate
descriptor; the way I can never pick apart your
ㄹ — r and l, each the beginning and end of the
other unbuckling into right and light sounding
the same but not quite the same; the way you
always ask me twice if I mean roses or loses,
each a flower dying between tongues that will
never capture meaning like the pictures you take
with eyes that do and do not speak the same
language — we forget that even the art of visual
interpretation arrives a product of country and
culture, twin signs in the same constellation
demanding we employ visual clues on which we
agree and then disagree — the way you say
you want pizza but I hear something like pija --
I capture your mouth in the middle of a vowel
my native tongue never produces, its heavy
awkward hand the fist that mangles sounds
into words neither of us can recognize --
the way I love you never sounds quite right unless
we say it three times in the language we heard
in the womb, so distant and different — the same.
let’s make gimbap, which your friend might
call sushi, which is and is not an accurate
descriptor; the way I can never pick apart your
ㄹ — r and l, each the beginning and end of the
other unbuckling into right and light sounding
the same but not quite the same; the way you
always ask me twice if I mean roses or loses,
each a flower dying between tongues that will
never capture meaning like the pictures you take
with eyes that do and do not speak the same
language — we forget that even the art of visual
interpretation arrives a product of country and
culture, twin signs in the same constellation
demanding we employ visual clues on which we
agree and then disagree — the way you say
you want pizza but I hear something like pija --
I capture your mouth in the middle of a vowel
my native tongue never produces, its heavy
awkward hand the fist that mangles sounds
into words neither of us can recognize --
the way I love you never sounds quite right unless
we say it three times in the language we heard
in the womb, so distant and different — the same.
Biography
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Marilee Goad is a queer writer residing in South Korea. She has work published or forthcoming in Ghost City Review, ELJ, Barrelhouse, Yes Poetry, and Homology Lit, amongst others. You can follow her on twitter @_gracilis and find her website at marileethepoet.tumblr.com.
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