Italian for Farouters - Tiziana Colusso

My tongue is burnt by vanities:

parasemantic epidemics

stick to my palate

exhaling from the daily ink,

from the smooth-sailing communication

that gets round me sailing around me

—or tries to—

and at day's end I take home

infinite sores and cankers

they hurt me

they catch me out without immunity

I'm choked by extra-community

boils on the threshold of the word.

Father & stepmother tongue

tongue of weeds

tongue of town-criers and buyers and fools

snare for loons, that stuffs with soap

operas and reality shows

the void of reality, language of dépistage

tongue (compulsory to be à la page

experimental word

games for the crossword page:

phatic fatigue that shifts stresses but doesn't shift

by one comma the world ).

On the table I'd wanted monastic

are heaped irreducible layers of trash:

bills, calligrams, junk-mail, invitations and invectives,

electoral brochures, chest-muscle salve

Cicada tongue. Dead tongue. Broken tongue.

Not one word for being saved.

Glossites of glossolalìa (and so be it).

Not even

the Esperantic promise of a perfect tongue

cures me

or a cabala of the elect

or a return to dialect

or passing the night sending

Jacopo Ortis' last SMSs on my mobile.

Then one day someone

asks me to teach the tongue

for free to foreigners.

To farouters? Freely

---

Tiziana Colusso (born 1960) Italy

Translated by Brenda Porster

Source: Big Bridge