Naomi simon-Kumar
No One Likes To Hear It
In class today we talk about colonisation
no one likes to hear it
how language was ripped from throats
tumid and bloody pulped into the ground
brown bodies soundless underfoot
a familiar story for some I have shelved away
what kind of indistinct trauma makes for this ambivalence I feel
when the slap across my face is as raw as it was fifteen years ago
mothertongue utterances a profanity
no one likes to hear it
now just a cut-glass lilt putting my mouth where the money is for the shopkeeper and the serviceman
and the corporate john to treat me half-human
(You sounded white over the phone)
I don’t know anything but
my indian father the winning elocutionist in his part of the world reads kierkegaard and dickens
stumbles over these haphazard phonetics vocals misspent in a language other than his own
while his daughter reads english at oxford
no one likes to hear it
what language is the currency of a noble life
for my father who pores over bleached reams of the white men he fears
and only leaves india in the pages of the book
coiling my hybrid tongue so tight I let slip a sonnet sutra
it’s all I know
maybe I can rewrite the world by
speaking it into existence
acha, I’m sorry
I don’t know anything but.
someone needs to hear it
the hare krishna
puts the bhagavad gita to my face and tries नमस्ते क्या हाल है
by the starbucks a different boy opens with فارسی
(Is that your real name?)
there are 844 dialects occupying that country not in my veins
unsolicited speech assumes alien status
every misnomer an affront
whiteness never perused quite the same
no one likes to hear it
what cadence is emancipation for someone inhabiting the in-between
who can’t speak to the bloods in her
who has never known just one
what is it worth to walk that line?
when anglo john sees just another brown face
colonisation
no word for
that in my
mothertongue
english the heavy vice
in my mouth is home
in class today i don’t speak.
no one likes to hear it
Naomi Simon-Kumar recently completed degrees in Political Science and Psychology at the University of Auckland. She is influenced by classical Indian lore, nature writing, and writers in the surrealist tradition.