Survive in the ‘right’ mouth is an iamb:
sur-VIVE, zephyr conceding to thunder.
In mine, a spondee: SUR-VIVE, an undammed
river running free, resisting plunder.
I can’t write this sonnet in iambic`
pentameter because I have no tongue
for prosody. Syllables are unpicked
in my throat, gnashed between my teeth, and strung
like chains around the hands and feet of near
forebears. Mother tongue made cargo &
commerce. Its melody made foreign to my ears.
The right way to speak a language coerced down your
throat is to haunt it with the ghost of yours, its triads &
trills. Let your tongue be a revolt.
H.B. Asari is a Niger Deltan prose and poetry writer. Her work explores current and possible future climate realities, complicated familial bonds and the nuances of queer coming-of-age experiences. Her work has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Stories Prize 2023, the Climate Change Poetry Prize 2022, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won the Stephen A. Dibiase Poetry Prize 2024. She has been published in adda, Strange Horizons, FIYAH, Consequence Forum and more.