ECL (English as a Colonial Language, an abecedarian)
American authorities
banned
Chamoru language to manifest
destiny :
English enforced at the empire’s
frontier of “freedom.”
Guåhan means “we
have,” but what is home-
island if silenced by the violent
jingoism of an unjust
klepto-settler state—if
language is stolen from our living
mouths &
nouns reduced to nothing—if
oceanic throats &
pasifika palates are pacified,
quiet like i halom tano’
ravaged by brown tree
snakes who swallowed i
totot, sihek, åga…
until ancestral
vowels & consonants, once avian
wild, now
xtirpated—
yielding to the colonial
zoo of endangered tongues.
The Zen of Spam
~
When you eat Spam,
what are you eating?
~
There is no path
To Spam.
Spam is the path.
~
What is the sound
of no Spam frying?
~
What is the true taste
of Spam?
~
Spam is
the absence
of striving
for Spam.
~
Does a poem
have Spam nature?
~
First there is Spam.
Then there is no Spam.
Then there is.
~
Is America Spam?
~
“Why aren’t you eating
Spam anymore?” you ask.
“I no longer see Spam
as outside,” I reply. “Why eat?”
***
Photograph of Craig Santos Perez by Hannah Ensor.
