Makela Shen
A GHAZAL FOR LANGUAGE
No one is, but my parents tell me that I was not born to a name in words.
They blew an effigy of life toward my cupped palms, formed it through flame in words.
I arrived in weeping; even their hands failed at the work of sculpting me.
I was not to be shaped, even by the two languages that labeled my body, laid claim in words.
Press your ear to every page as if it might be living; what is body but a script the living keep revisiting?
Once upon a time, I went on a crusade for versions of myself—borrowed alphabets (tokens) that I became in words.
I once asked you: Explain 内卷 to me—(it’s an infinite spiral $\notin$ meaning, $3 \neq 15$ unless through $\text{mod-}12$ equivalence)—misrendered, mistranslated, spoken murdered into being, defamed in words.
The sound of 命脈 and キラキラ is how water loves the fall of itself;
English hardens lifeblood into glass, dries the rain out of sparkling. But in me, they move like my blood—a picture frame in words.
My hand cannot compress mountain, mouth, fire, sun into the ineluctable brush of the “ineffable.”
Chinese knows how to draw the seen, not how the unseen came in words.
La mano, los brazos, el pie have no owner unless they sprout rose-curved wings from dandelion seeds.
Le cœur becomes mon cœur only in falling (half-dreamt with a skip of the pulse). Is that poetry named in words?
我愛你, je t’aime, 愛してる, te quiero:
coding the (System.out.println(“) four ways/equations/algorithms to say love, the same in words. (”);)
GLOSSARY
Chinese
内卷 (nèijuǎn)—involution, a term referring to a cultural social phenomenon of a “rat race” competition in the workplace, academics, etc.
命脈 (mìngmài)—lifeblood
我愛你 (wǒ ài nǐ)—I love you, the most intense version possible
Japanese
キラキラ (kirakira)—an onomatopoeia that emulates the sound of something sparkling; visually, it also means glittering
愛してる (aishiteru)—I love you, reserved only for moments of profound declarations of love and commitment
Spanish
la mano—the hand; body parts are typically spoken of without a possessive
los brazos—the arms
el pie—the foot
te quiero—I love you, reserved only for serious relationships or very close family
French
le cœur—the heart, in a physical biological sense; used without a possessive to refer to one’s physical heart
mon cœur—my heart, but used as an affectionate endearment; does not refer to one’s physical heart
je t’aime—I love you, the most intense version possible
LaTeX
(a typesetting system for mathematical equations and formulas, wrapped with the symbol $ in markdown)
$\notin$—∉, not an element of; used in set theory to denote that a particular element does not belong to a specific set
$3 \neq 15$—3 ≠ 15, not equal to
$\text{mod-}12$—mod-12, \text{} being a command that doesn’t format the letters in italics but more like text
Java
(a computer programming language)
System.out.println(“”);—a print command that prints whatever is inside the quotes
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