Mona Hua

Mona Hua, Person in Museum

portrait of depressive clad in tongues Samuel Gee

forgive me if i stutter for years i felt like a forgotten language a shadow under frosted glass my ears stuffed with static my throat greasy citronella and tongue a wick i lit to keep the bugs away

in the beginning i thought objects trapped their names like spiders in a glass cup i thought my name would bubble up when i whistled i was wrong then i knew my body was a compass pointing towards the moon’s round period

you see all sound ends and begins in silence language a gag god fit in our throats to keep us from naming him so i gave him names orchid spiderweb honeysuckle rotgut emerald backwards winter light through a kaleidoscope

when my name did not come when called i created it with a burnt stick on concrete i called myself graphite acolyte of silence manytongued incoherent nib of ripped papyrus i took seven days to name myself with private secretive words what i give to you is a translation

all this happened soundless as a dam against a river as a man with a gun approaching a sleeping home as someone uncoupling syllables and watching the sense scurry out of sound