Ars Poetica: Ambulthiyal Abecedarian

A pound of

Bruised mangoes

Cleaved into halves, chilied and salted like the heads of

Dead fish, which my mother also made, and made us

Eat, our jaws slick around their jaws, a kind of kissing

Fruitful desire, sucking the yolk out of their bright eyes,

Giant moons blooming on our tongues, & the pupils pulsing like syllables— look at your unbearable,

Hollow, hallowed hunger. You have to eat the whole head, even the bones, especially the marrow rusting

Inside. You leave nothing on your plate, spit-shine the sides

Just in case. ඇඹුල්තියල්, the meal my new mouth calls sour fish,

Kneading the English slow and precise as a

Long-range missile. Somewhere, miles and decades away, someone’s

Mother is

No longer a mother, only dusty bone and moon-bloomed syllables like the carcass of a good dinner. When my mother sees the video of the orphaned child begging for milk, she says, See. This is what real hunger looks like. Be grateful.

Once, I shouted at my mother for packing ඇඹුල්තියල් in my bag, its stench of

Piss strapped to my back like a

Quilt, a heavy one only a mother could sew. The

Reek it slaughtered in my classroom, what the other kids called horse shit, and what I parroted

Straight back at my mother—You made me horse shit, horse shit, though I didn’t know

The meaning of the words, only the lush of its language, the arrow it folded of my tongue: pulling back at horse,

Unfurling at shit, curled and wet as a fishhook. The only way I can describe my mouth is a

Vengeful weapon: missile, arrow, hook. If I say my mother didn’t know what the

Words meant either, does it make things better? Once, she told me that the root of song is son, and all I did was correct her, taught her useless etymology while

Xanthan gum simmered her stew into sinew. I was a wicked song, pearled in perfect syntax. I translated forms,

Yelled her long relentless name at the customs officer when he thought he smelt piss in her suitcase, asked if she had anything to declare and she didn’t know how to respond. I chorused all her pity into poems,

Zeroed in on her suffering like a shark, chasing a fish for miles; and the corpse I’d leave, cleaned to the bone.