You have one new message. It came in at sunset
when the sky was a smeared fruit color.
Hello. Here I am—your first language,
the one you planted in the school playground,
the rusty swing set, the dusk train stop. I remember your lips sometimes.
When they were learning, they forgot me.
How teeth molded me like freshly baked bread from the heart.
I was the rumor in your grandmother’s throat.
While she stirred the broth, the name she called the wind
when it knocked at the door.
I now live behind a small old man who talks to me
in the manner in which he would talk to his dog.
He says I am like rain on the roof; no one will repair it.
I am not bitter. I am merely tired. I am tired of being
a remnant, a footnote, an italic sentence in another’s book.
They came in grammars and flags. They said I was a barbarian.
That my voice pulls the language apart, like a scar forming mid-sentence.
So they stitched you up in a tongue that was not yours.
But—I was grounded in song, in the bend of your mother’s cursing
when she scorches the dinner. I am the ache in your jaw.
Speaking “home” in a borrowed language.
This is not goodbye. This is a reminder. I am not dead.
I am still between syllables.
Press 1 to save.
Press 2 to erase.
Press 3 to listen again.
David M. Alper’s poetry appears in The McNeese Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Bookends Review, and elsewhere. He is an educator in New York City.
Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses.
Heavy Feather Review 