Four Poems by Caroline M. Mar (poetry, ’13)
An excerpt from “Ghost Language,” one of four poems by Caroline M. Mar (poetry, ’13) appearing with an interview, at Connotation Press:
Ghost Language
My grandmother, the white one, my mother’s mother, she has Alzheimer’s.
It isn’t an easy thing for Grammie, or my mother, or me. My grandfather,
the Chinese one, my father’s father, it was the same: he lost his English, then his mind;
the ghosts all came to pace his hallways.
Things I know about ghosts: the haunting, of course.
We bring Grammie mini-candy bars, the tiny shiny squares of sweet she loves,
and honestly it might not be so terrible, a quick and painful heart attack since she’s forgotten
she wanted to end it before things got this bad.
That sometimes, ghosts have voices. I was . . . I was a smart woman—
a writer, as deliberate in her choice of words as in her choice of pearls.
Her language never failed her. My students speak a language I don’t always understand. It rings
of false bravado, a high-striker hammer dropping to prove some mewling manhood.
That ghosts spoke to you more clearly than I could, at the end.
I teach the code’s switch, the value of speaking both vernacular
and academic, the only way they’ll make it past entry-level at Foot Locker. But also,
the way those ghosts were welcome, and weren’t you happy to see them,
so happy to have back all the people you’d loved, together, like a reunion.
I am supposed to value their home language, the way my father,
ghetto-C-Town born, still says It’s mines. She does. Does. Not “do.”
Godammit, just speak right. […continue reading here]
