from A Series of Punctuation
By Hajar Hussaini
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A Distinctive Duplication
Letter P is among the sounds that blocks the airflow, it has a coalescence with soft S / or key sounding C and/or L which makes a thing a common english word. Rarely found in Farsi and if so imported by tradesmen like a tin of pringles. For example, there is a sudden release of air that follows an ellipse’s P. There: clouds are created. I eavesdrop on the friction of two unvoiced rubbing against each other.
Throughout my adolescence I circled words with those three letters. Copied from textbooks and recited them from a blue recycled journal, its front and back covered in the logo of the international children’s emergency fund. I drew straight lines on top of zigzagged horizons to create an equal number of squares. In each I carefully placed one word / was a frequent exercise prior to stretching myself on a shared mattress bed.
I was told that my table of disembodied words is not how learning a language works but one dissects a complex into its capsules. In an age of modern explosives and extinction of languages, english became my precise measurement of stress. Plosives, in them, was a theatrical movement of my lips: how their natives articulated. Ellipses are continuation. Of three periods.
Cycles of internal bleedings. Endometriosis, an Asian American doctor years later diagnosed. It is making you an infertile woman. That I, need to hurry. I can ignore their placements in prose. In poetry, they are invasive. Intruding a community and removing individuals. Not needed. Not needed. Already implied. As suspension points or for a stuttering effect, ellipses are always together, if one is not fitting in, a writer cannot separate.
the united nation of poetry rejects the full stop
a full stop is in the tongue’s arsenal [a mallet chapandaz keeps] it intervenes in every motion enforcing
a sentence, bonds paragraphs through the separation of the varying verbs / then unifies them to co-exist, but in the eyes of the other marks it’s a ruthless authoritarian / imposing a constitutional referendum
a portrait of dot is in its entrance / against guernica and the installation of bani adam every statement needs a full stop [a speech of] my source of food is pause, the freedom to talk, it tosses my stream of consciousness onto the dark cavities of teeth / making me echo what comes through the ear / it gets routine order from the frontal cortex
it conceals sentiments that don’t fit into a linear structure, with an amplitude of my rejection fear – the fear of being called out the violent member of the group – and when there’s neither a time nor an interest – i swallow them in a ratio of making shorter statements [cubicandtender] not harsh like ashes i passed through
or the goblins of human rights, as an object the terminal period is an ak47 pointed at my dictionary of pouring out, initializing the establishments. My therapist says this act is post-traumatic [omittingstress, drinkingfromher cup] and in my mind i commute to a post office where the letters can be sent / like a mailbox i feel emptied
Letter P is among the sounds that blocks the airflow, it has a coalescence with soft S / or key sounding C and/or L which makes a thing a common english word. Rarely found in Farsi and if so imported by tradesmen like a tin of pringles. For example, there is a sudden release of air that follows an ellipse’s P. There: clouds are created. I eavesdrop on the friction of two unvoiced rubbing against each other.
Throughout my adolescence I circled words with those three letters. Copied from textbooks and recited them from a blue recycled journal, its front and back covered in the logo of the international children’s emergency fund. I drew straight lines on top of zigzagged horizons to create an equal number of squares. In each I carefully placed one word / was a frequent exercise prior to stretching myself on a shared mattress bed.
I was told that my table of disembodied words is not how learning a language works but one dissects a complex into its capsules. In an age of modern explosives and extinction of languages, english became my precise measurement of stress. Plosives, in them, was a theatrical movement of my lips: how their natives articulated. Ellipses are continuation. Of three periods.
Cycles of internal bleedings. Endometriosis, an Asian American doctor years later diagnosed. It is making you an infertile woman. That I, need to hurry. I can ignore their placements in prose. In poetry, they are invasive. Intruding a community and removing individuals. Not needed. Not needed. Already implied. As suspension points or for a stuttering effect, ellipses are always together, if one is not fitting in, a writer cannot separate.
the united nation of poetry rejects the full stop
a full stop is in the tongue’s arsenal [a mallet chapandaz keeps] it intervenes in every motion enforcing
a sentence, bonds paragraphs through the separation of the varying verbs / then unifies them to co-exist, but in the eyes of the other marks it’s a ruthless authoritarian / imposing a constitutional referendum
a portrait of dot is in its entrance / against guernica and the installation of bani adam every statement needs a full stop [a speech of] my source of food is pause, the freedom to talk, it tosses my stream of consciousness onto the dark cavities of teeth / making me echo what comes through the ear / it gets routine order from the frontal cortex
it conceals sentiments that don’t fit into a linear structure, with an amplitude of my rejection fear – the fear of being called out the violent member of the group – and when there’s neither a time nor an interest – i swallow them in a ratio of making shorter statements [cubicandtender] not harsh like ashes i passed through
or the goblins of human rights, as an object the terminal period is an ak47 pointed at my dictionary of pouring out, initializing the establishments. My therapist says this act is post-traumatic [omittingstress, drinkingfromher cup] and in my mind i commute to a post office where the letters can be sent / like a mailbox i feel emptied
Hajar Hussaini is a poet from Afghanistan and is currently a graduate student of Creative Writing at Iowa Writer's Workshop.