My mother tongue is a deceptive septic tank.
It stinks but also smells at times of honeysuckle.
Fills treachery with a sudden flight of angels
9
It curses and cries and breaks down on the road
like my grandpa’s old green Mercedes. Drops of gas
filters through it like raindrops leaving oil and mud.
A mess to clean or bury it has footprints on the side
showing everyone where to cross and how to count
the structure of colors and cracks in every distant corner
the hopes, the drains, the longing of stranded balconies.
And under it, the one climbing rocks for the view
who likes making other people use its power tools.
Below, below, the enemy language where the Dativ
whips the Akkusativ, their identities live to confuse
foreigners and students, live for orders and graves.
Letters parched and dry, pressed between the pages
of old books and envelopes, lists stuck in dusty drawers
left under an old flower pot. Debts unpaid.
9
Swedish-born Gunilla Theander Kester is an award-winning poet and the author of If I Were More Like Myself (The Writer’s Den, 2015). Her two poetry chapbooks: Mysteries I-XXIII (2011) and Time of Sand and Teeth (2009) were published by Finishing Line Press. She was co-editor with Gary Earl Ross of The Still Empty Chair: More Writings Inspired by Flight 3407 (2011) and The Empty Chair: Love and Loss in the Wake of Flight 3407 (2010). Dr. Kester has published many poems in Swedish anthologies and magazines, including Bonniers Litterära Magasin. Her work has or will be published in On the Seawall, Cider Press, The American Journal of Poetry, Pendemics, and Atlanta Review. She lives near Buffalo, NY where she teaches classical guitar.
