[APPLAUSE]
One more piece?
Two more pieces?
[EXHALES DEEPLY]
Y'all OK?
[CHUCKLES]
Do you understand English?
Are you OK?
[LAUGHTER]
Hey, we were just talking about this four days ago.
English has become, by executive order,
the official language of the United States of America.
[CHUCKLING]
I did for a long while this afternoon, briefly--
well, long while, briefly.
For a long while this afternoon, consider
quite sincerely delivering this in Tamil, this entire reading.
[LAUGHTER]
India has more than 20 official languages and hundreds
and hundreds of recognized languages,
and it is a great democracy still, we hope.
Monolingualism is a great threat to democracy.
[APPLAUSE]
Oh, speaking of monolingualism, I got a segue.
[CHUCKLES]
So the child who was born in Singapore is now seven.
And a few years ago when I was writing this book,
I saw her across an oval mahogany table, our dining
table, sitting across from her great grandmother,
my grandmother Helen, and they were singing a song
which many of you might know.
It's a real hit.
It goes A, B, C, D, E, F--
Very good, everyone's literate.
Yeah, and I was very curious about the letter that
comes after G, which is--
AUDIENCE: H.
DIVYA VICTOR: Good job.
Very good job.
Aitch. And I was really struck by how different--
how differently they each pronounced the
haitch. And Zameen, our daughter, says aitch. How do you say your haitch?
"Hai-tch" or "ai-tch"?
AUDIENCE: Aitch.
DIVYA VICTOR: Yeah, so this is a poem that considers
the difference in their haitches, and what is and is not
aspirated in that letter.
So my grandmother says it like I do, haitch, and my child says it aitch.
So how is their locution located in Michigan and in India?
This poem is called locution location.
It'll be my penultimate poem and then
I'm going to close with new work.
She sings the letters to her great granddaughter.
Strings them, marigolds into garlands
and the order of the alphabet.
E, F, G. She tugs the haitch, taut and long, far from the breast.
A letter the length of a coast.
The width of a gull's caw.
She now carries the haitch like I will carry the gurney later.
Weightless hammer of feather.
The letters swim with the orange petals
around and around her child and crone.
Milk flesh home, mouthly smelling of talc and gooseberry.
When this song sills, will we bury her in the sky?
Cirrus flight folded into the pleats.
Cresting, riding the crest and trench
of her saris weave and weft.
Will we be left with her haitch?
A patch of ash, just voiceless and glottal,
an open casket fricative and open hatch?
haitch, listen, I am asking you for her tongue wrapped in twill.
Flung to its thatched edge.
I'm asking for a body thrown so far,
it meets itself in the mouth.
How do we bury her haitch?
One glyph on either side, arm in arm, harm in harm,
how will we use this twin rutted throat in an open boat home?
Haitch circles her tea water sunk by cream.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
haitch floats my grandmother's child body breastless
buoying ankles cuffed in silver scales, sequined on its heels
so it can stay and stray and swim with her
when she is restless, sugar hungry, when she is 80 and 220.
Heavy human cane and fist.
Knife in hand in the kitchen thrumming, haitch, haitch, haitch.
The percussive hinder.
The fescues of coriander.
Thunder haitch, haitch, haitch. Turns the lathe with each exhale.
Haitch, haitch, haitch. Her belly wet with sink and soap.
Its damp equatorial girth curls my mother into her mother.
Hatchet to hammock.
Split and swung.
Haitch, the waist in two.
Haitch, the lips in four.
Haitch, a longitude's wretch.
I chart this stretch of tongue.
I listen for how her breath measures the distance.
Pulls skin apart to etch the gravity of gravidity.
My daughter, pouts yogurt out, plums
the berries, sun smitten, filmed in milk,
wades her phonemic fen, hailing her elder with bib and mitt.
But when this song sills, where shall we dig?
Us grand motherless fools, us rudderless, us letter
poor with drum and dread.
Where shall we dig
haitch, haitch, haitch for this shibboleth of breath?
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
My grandmother is very weirded out by the fact
that I talk about her haitch.
[CHUCKLING]
She's like, that's private.
I was like, it's a letter.
[LAUGHTER]
That-- it's a letter.