from YINGLOSSIA by Ariel Resnikoff

from YINGLOSSIA

to escape the perpetual torments inflicted upon it
the dybbuk-tongue seeks refuge in a garbled mouth

(A)

My chronic itch
may it bring health upon our navel
for small favors
w/ minor fortunes
& big doings —
THE REAL DEAL:
a-thenticty
I don’t give a hang about.
To all those happy-go-lucky people,
they should live!
What a few chews wldn’t do
after midnight
when the hostess serves
peanut hor d’ouvres.
As long as a lung
or liver hangs
on the nose
another disease made
easier to stomach
rash on my ass
made less to bare.
Maw to the ear might
serve me right
for a year & a Wednesday
a slice of gan eden.
Healthful as a body
can be (under the
circumstances.
Tho it shldn’t happen
to the worst of us
(cld be said about
any of us. Too smart to do it
ourselves
in spite of everything that
churns out wrong.
Culturally impudent finicky bagatelle.
Getting senile?
Find some absented-mind
ed peace already.
An alphabet for
alphabet
‘s first language
jitters. & to all those
cobblers
walking barefoot
thru the streets
give them shoes!
Not the one & just
-born excuse
in over-dressed wandering.
Majority rules. Minority’s
a joke.
Really? That’s
how it goes?
That’s what they said.

Ariel Resnikoff

Ariel Resnikoff is the author of Between Shades (Materialist Press, 2014) & the co-author of Ten Four: Poems, Translations, Variations (The Operating System, 2015) with Jerome Rothenberg. He is currently at work on a translation into English of Mikhl Likht’s Yiddish modernist long poem, Protsesiyes (Processions), in collaboration with Stephen Ross. Ariel is an editor-at-large on Global Modernists on Modernism (Bloomsbury, forthcoming) & curates the “Multilingual Poetics” reading/talk series at Kelly Writers House.

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