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lalang twist

by Gitan Djeli
14 November 2019

my tongue mutters a p at p at wa

a poetry of brevity in acoustic effect

it rolls clinks spits without caesural comma

pours from the pit of my affective stomach

 

ayo do baba

my francofied té lé g ou rhymes an island breeze

a song mixed in bo hoj poo ri chautals

it coils loops twists with a street syntax

flows from the pot of a sanskritised creole

 

atchia bheti

my grandmother calls from goodlands

a sonic rhapsody of the senses

she scolds reeks shrieks with no full stop

ghosts from the still of my memory bank

 

ale vini a n ou ale

my lips repeats two sonic negations

e k ou te vi ni vi ni hear hear come come I say

it booms roars looms with its own grammar

marks from the archives of a silenced history

 

lalang twist

my body dances to metric syllables

deranging the parataxis archive

it stirs links kicks with no syntactic connector

blows from the mind of visc e ra li ty

 

my voice flutters within four tongues

a transit of worlds in one world

it chinks ticks clicks in bass and high frequencies

songs from the chime of a muted sonata

 

 

 

 

Photo credit: Dmitry Chulov

 

About the Author

Gitan Djeli

Gitan Djeli is a Mauritian writer and researcher in cultural studies. Her poems appear in The Funambulist, Poetry, Doek!, and in the anthology We Mark Your Memory by Commonwealth Writers among others. @gitandjeli   

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