Losing my language
Gabriela Halas
My body was braille
for the creeping influences
– Seamus Heaney
What was then a hard-bent thing
folds under new air. The thick
mess of flesh once filled
my mouth, thrum of wind
and the trill of bird
wing. The Atlantic, that slip
and hoard; stalk to shoreline. The peripheral
began to take shape. We lost
our tongues in the soft plum
of fraternity. Tended less
to edges. I offer a spear to pierce
translation. A lapse before
these small-scale extinctions.
Nothing arrives as expected—
a fumble, unadhered, to bone.
for the creeping influences
– Seamus Heaney
What was then a hard-bent thing
folds under new air. The thick
mess of flesh once filled
my mouth, thrum of wind
and the trill of bird
wing. The Atlantic, that slip
and hoard; stalk to shoreline. The peripheral
began to take shape. We lost
our tongues in the soft plum
of fraternity. Tended less
to edges. I offer a spear to pierce
translation. A lapse before
these small-scale extinctions.
Nothing arrives as expected—
a fumble, unadhered, to bone.
Gabriela Halas immigrated to Canada during the early 1980s, grew up in northern Alberta, lived in Alaska for seven years, and currently resides in B.C., Canada. She has published poetry in a variety of literary journals including About Place Journal, Prairie Fire, december magazine, Rock & Sling, The Louisville Review, The Hopper; fiction in subTerrain, Broken Pencil, and The Hopper; nonfiction in untethered magazine, Grain, Pilgrimage, High Country News, and forthcoming in The Whitefish Review. She has received two Best of the Net nominations in poetry (2020). She lives and writes on traditional Ktunaxa Nation land. www.gabrielahalas.org
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