Moorish Malachite

Abstract

"At the site of my transfer I adopted the song of Lisboa, hummed on the burgundy aura of the breeze, I danced in and out of conjugations, barely remembering to use USTEDES. The result being everyone is already familiar to me. And all of us are familiar with the inability of my faltering Spanish to fully infiltrate a Portuguese ear: a lover never truly knows the heart of the beloved. I can close my eyes and hear love expressed in so many different languages at once: German, Portuguese, and French; somehow I recognize every word of Italian. It is not lost on me that all of these variants were thrust upon my ancestors and I, replacing our stampedout tongues, hammered into our wombal chambers before we even fully filled our vessels. Who were we and how did we sound before being conquered?"(p.153)