What counts as a mother language?

By Christina Ng
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Poetry

I’m alive and I have an appetite/ for longing.

Poetry

For a second, I imagine how it feels to inhabit a body people desire like gold.

Poetry

Kakolór pati kan álang na tulang nin tawó / an pigrunot na bagás asín ginibong puto. |
Especially when you notice the rice flour / that she uses is the color of human bone.

Poetry

where, fifty, years, earlier, lolo, learned, engineering

Poetry

My arms ache/ in the cereal aisle.

Poetry

you choose to put yourself beneath its flag

Poetry

I once lost my name in a pyre

Poetry

Ringu (1998)” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)”

Poetry

their oceanic smell that screams where they come from instead of where they are carried to

Poetry

I could make it alone
but I don’t want to.

Poetry

映 with a skinny sun radical and 其 a pronoun/ pointing to who knows what.

Poetry

What if he just said the bird waited forever to alight.

Poetry

I am the world inside/ of every persimmon

Poetry

Joy is impossible to fake, they say.

Poetry

I am trying to imagine my new life when I am returned to the place of my parents’ birth.

Poetry

Now it’s raining and I’m sixteen and unlicensed.

Poetry

There are few men who will communicate with you in all the languages you know.

Poetry

I have built my new tongue from old corpses.

Poetry

As if it were instinct, you held tightly
to a slim bar of sunlight

Poetry

Turns out it, too, wanted
to know more than what the body can do.

Poetry

I’m alive and I have an appetite/ for longing.

Poetry

映 with a skinny sun radical and 其 a pronoun/ pointing to who knows what.

Poetry

For a second, I imagine how it feels to inhabit a body people desire like gold.

Poetry

What if he just said the bird waited forever to alight.

Poetry

Kakolór pati kan álang na tulang nin tawó / an pigrunot na bagás asín ginibong puto. |
Especially when you notice the rice flour / that she uses is the color of human bone.

Poetry

I am the world inside/ of every persimmon

Poetry

where, fifty, years, earlier, lolo, learned, engineering

Poetry

Joy is impossible to fake, they say.

Poetry

My arms ache/ in the cereal aisle.

Poetry

I am trying to imagine my new life when I am returned to the place of my parents’ birth.

Poetry

you choose to put yourself beneath its flag

Poetry

Now it’s raining and I’m sixteen and unlicensed.

Poetry

I once lost my name in a pyre

Poetry

There are few men who will communicate with you in all the languages you know.

Poetry

Ringu (1998)” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)”

Poetry

I have built my new tongue from old corpses.

Poetry

their oceanic smell that screams where they come from instead of where they are carried to

Poetry

As if it were instinct, you held tightly
to a slim bar of sunlight

Poetry

I could make it alone
but I don’t want to.

Poetry

Turns out it, too, wanted
to know more than what the body can do.