A COLLECTIVE BRUISE, A TEAM, A TIME SPENT TOGETHER, A CHOREOGRAPHIC SPELL, A PREFATORY CHARM, THE SENSATION THAT NOTHING THAT COMES OUT OF MY MOUTH, FINGERS, KEYBOARD, MOTHER TONGUE, LANGUAGE, IS MINE.
Somewhere along the lines I rest
between your tongues, plant dances
where perfume meets your smell.
I fall i slip in the sleep of your tongue around my languages.
Please fold your time slowly near me
Unfixing, dislocating, disowning, the dances-words-thoughts-tongues borrowers
slid swords into words into libraries.
Owing to one another all the time,
borrowing words-thoughts as we are dances,
re-flexing our muscle tones,
this language is not mine
I bit my tongue, which is not mine
It’s a mother’s language says.
How i love the mutual indebtedness that is not about paying one another back, but about enjoying that dependance, listening to the ghosts -our protextions- in the
paddings, quilts, of our shady studies.
Jumping off board, surfing sofas, texts, annotations and their arrangements as many
vehicles, conveyors of senses -as in senses - leaving the littorals,
our literal translations,
leaving the ship [a pause for the word ship. The break it asks to think of a ship.]
This language is not mine,
it’s motherless.
I bit my tongue, I bite your tongue,
It’s a mother’s tongue
language says.
Hay-feverish, jay-feverishly tip-tonguing,
the glitchiness unfolds as if declining language itself and what evidence it contains.
Tongue inside out,
still firmly around and smiling at the many years since the caress.
A voice leaks down
under my feet,
drips in reverse in my mouth and sings no songs in my arms.
No thing that comes out of my mouths, fingers, keyboard is mine
The things that sit under the folded seats of theatre venues - les strapontins de nos allées et venues au théâtre;
striking a text in brushed aside footnotes, cultivating cult notes,
resting in forces that already exist.
Listening to the voices trickling down the inside of my clothes, my bed-sheet, the inside of my arms.
The smell of wet pepper corns lightly crushed, rising from the bed in the light splash. this smell.
Tongue inside out,
firmly around and smiling at the many years since the caress.
And the voices that don’t stop falling,
bumping on to familiar patterns on the floor, skirting the old stain, taking a collection of words in their wake,
they leak down under my feet,
drip in reverse in my mouth
and sing no songs in my arms.
by Alix Eynaudi
written in the company of Paula Caspão, Avery F. Gordon, Mirene Arsanios, Valentina Desideri, Fred Moten, Laura Vazquez
& many others.
thanks to Clara Amaral & Simon Asencio for having hosted this poem on misted.cc at the occasion of the new moon of the 30th of April 2022