COLLECTIVE
after watching trees slide
past the screen of my phone
I passed your old sharehouse and
in the humid half-light recalled
renovations, roaches, red wine &
the grind of history repeating
whenever I tried learning my
gender-neutral mother tongue
I’d slip into schoolroom habits
of scrambled chinese whispers:
where turns into di mana
becomes die stadt, the seins &
signs of abrasion when one
google translates language
where y’all at? I won’t see youse
til I find the place where cities
go to die. still the eucalypt dries
brittle and the birds shit & cackle
and your old house smells of
dying prepositions. I am here and
you are ihr and one is the majestic
plural. ‘sorry wrong language’ call
out the damn birds, and hanging up-
side down end summer on a dial tone
