Saturday, November 18, 2006

Palinode 6: Bitter-like

In this lap language I’m not speaking sweetly.

I’ll tell you the workbook words I really don’t understand:

Crisp body
Bright flavor
Noble rot.

This one I say daily:
Viscosity

:

“A measure
Of the resistance
Of a substance
To motion
Under an applied
Force.”

This sound will ruin you:
malolactic fermentation.

I say them,
Make them up,
Make them indivisible.

This is:
--German style
--South African style
--From the Loire Valley

Just a word bank, and still they ask me:

What does dry mean?

My voice is:
noble,
bright,
and crisp.

I would rather an empty table--
Ware without contingency,

Bitter-like, I say

For (preposition) no reason.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought the first line read "Jap language" and I was like, "Since when did Hailey become so racist?"]

Vusi

hailey said...

ha! to be honest, i've written poems which have been read as racist before. it is indeed a power to elicit that kind of reaction.

actually, most every time i use any dialect i get called racist.

i mean, a nigga just don't understand.

Anonymous said...

Are you perhaps related to Michael "Kramer" Richards?

I was called a racist in high school because I proclaimed in a class that I chose to eat soul food after reading "Mama Day" (a book about the Gullah peoples on the Carolina coasts). One girl thought that was racist and hated me the rest of her life. I should see her at my reunion, which will be even more awkward since I study Africa now.

Anonymous said...

Oh that was me.

Vusi