Call to Cutting/Tanka X./zannenda/Tanka IV.
by GABRIELLE OLIVER
in Spring 2019
Aziza Gibson-Hunter, "Trace Currents Bueu Mali," 2013-14
Call to Cutting
In
sections
places where they divide
humanity,
live,
consciously,
on your throat,
the fragments of pain—
that drain you of your own blood
Slice yourself
to
pieces,
you from
the ghetto
and be breathing
with a knife
pressed to your skin in
violent events
Tanka X.
to my father, ridiculing the speech patterns of women of the diaspora.
when you mock part of
the tongue that is your daughters,
is their mother, too
hysterical and laughing,
they will carve out their own mouths.
zannenda
“What a shame.”
my grandfather, on measuring and comparing my Japanese tongue to that of 2018 Grand Slam Singles winner, Naomi Osaka.
It seemed like they were darting back and forth
across the green,
courting my country
those foreigners
that looked nothing
Japanese.
whenthat gaijin girl’s face was on NHK,
filled every slot in the Rising Sun
until late afternoon,
I thought she looked identical
to the one we’d been housing
and feeding for spring.
both had that unfathomable reddish-brown
as if they’d been burned, worked outside for too long
– hardly feminine.
the icon the dark spot on or flag,
the one who’d spent longer
outside
was supposed to have more of
our blood,
was supposed to act like us
but could not understand an interviewer from her own birthplace,
nor could she say much more than
“sorry, I don’t know”
could not say
“hello” and “thank you”
like a woman should.
even that one
of no relation to me – fruit of a past marriage’s
mistake with rotten skin – could speak
better than that.
What a shame.
Tanka IV.
for treating vergetures.
stretched past desire,
he construes your body’s lines
reveals naked words
on your skin. he holds binds your
unread pages with his hands.
Born in Montgomery County, MD, Gabrielle Oliver is a recent graduate of Howard University with a Bachelor of Arts in English. She also holds a degree in Japanese Language and Culture from her studies at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan. A self-proclaimed linguist, Oliver is most proficient in Japanese – with experience translating for the State Department, the Embassy of Japan, the National Cherry Blossom Festival, the Japan-America Society of Washington, DC, and for multiple DC-based newspapers – but has also studied American Sign Language (ASL), German, Dutch, Italian, and French. She is the Japan-America Society of Washington, DC's 2018 Tanaka Green Scholarship recipient for her studies at Kansai Gaidai University, as well as for her diachronic research on the aboriginal Ainuitakk language of Japan.