A sledge hammer driving railroad
spikes into tracks. That's how my father
bends Russian.

Thirty-two years in the country I call my home
is not enough time for his Syrian tongue to slither
around the Cyrillic alphabet.

Among its rolling sounds and letters
with too many squiggles and tails, my father
still feels a foreigner. A hyena

bathing in the Neva river. A king
with no crown or throne.

              □

How do we rate the perfection of language?

I've been told my English is perfect
countless times. The accent is flawless— 

not fully gone but just enough of it left to keep
people wondering about my origin.

Five rubles tossed into a wishing well
filled with cents— 

in America, people welcome me
as long as my voice entertains.

                □

I feel Russian dangling from my tonsils,
but when I channel my firstborn tongue,

my mother cries out in what I hear as perfection,
the rumbling language of those left behind.

You sound like a foreigner
who knows Russian really really well.

Посмотри, что со мной сделала Америка.
Then look at what Russia did to my father.

From years of casting the steel
of nonnative vocabulary, we molded
our own versions of accents.

With conjugations that choke my father's neck
and lax vowels skewing my jaw, listen to our mouths
join the choir of second-hand syllables.

Hear them grow louder.
Get ready to misunderstand.
from the book IF MY HOUSE HAS A VOICE /  Newfound Press
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"The Crossing of Our Accents" recognizes language as the main, if not only, point of familial connection between a father and a daughter. I believe that language is what ultimately binds us all, it’s the center of any relationship, no matter what shape or lack thereof that language takes. So, this poem proceeds to question the English and Russian languages—their pliability, beauty, and failures.

Elina Katrin on "The Crossing of Our Accents"
Kaveh Akbar
"What Drives Kaveh Akbar? The Responsibility of Survival"

"During the pandemic, he decided to try his hand at long-form prose. While other people were learning to salsa or to speak German, he said, he put himself on a 'narrative diet' of two novels a week and a movie every day."

via THE NEW YORK TIMES
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Cover of Theophanies
What Sparks Poetry:
Sarah Ghazal Ali on Language as Form

"'Matrilineage [Umbilicus]' sprung from this unsettledness, not halfway into my first pregnancy, when my body ceased to be entirely mine. I came to the page eyes closed, hands outstretched to trace the contours of my thinking. I could not yet trace the face of my child, so I tried instead to touch each thought as it was born."
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