YOU KNOW IT BUT IT DON’T KNOW YOU
After TAKO TAAL: a 5 poem series by Alycia Pirmohamed
i.
she places the silverware
one thumb slip beyond the edge
beyond the pattern that repeats and repeats
beyond the sun
coloured spade
beyond the petiole ’s slant that repeats
into / the next world.
ii.
[Baduja]
Even with the backs of wild rowan
behind her.
Even when the wind calls out a different
name.
Even with smoke ebbing from every
mistranslation.
Even as the tree splits neatly into its
metaphors.
Even though they only meet at the
centrefold of a photograph.
Even as the metaphor splits into its
likened parts.
Even though a landscape can change a
body.
Even with the inherited memory of water
between past and present.
Even though her body is riven with
departures.
Even when the deer bounds across a
grove toward the next in line.
[Baduja]Because this is a version of a version
of rainfall.
Because she is told they mirror the
same face.
Because they do not meet beyond a
border of glass.
Because a tongue splits through a throng of trees.
Because his image is made truer by the
fabric of her dreams.
Because the two of them are likened
parts.
Because she plots a seed in every
conditional space.
Because she crosses water and because
water is the tether back.
Because she follows herself until she
is tender.
Because time gathers behind her like a
V of birds
iii.
Mouth: raw, active,
noun.
Say, “I’ve watched you do it.”
The noun of a river
is, for example, a learned gesture.
Mouth: the place of
translation:
rice cooked in oil with fish & meat & veg.
Say, “benachin.”
Mouth: raw, active, noun.
Say, “I’ve watched you
do it.” The noun of a
river is, for example, a
learned gesture. Mouth:
a place of translation: rice
cooked in oil with fish &
meat & veg. Say,
“ ”
iv.
:: Notice how maroon is a colour that deepens with every pour
:: Formerly a constellation of spring in her palm
:: See also: the hand that swept along a spine of berries x years ago
:: The past streams from a pitcher like thirst
into the present tense
:: She is made in his image therefore she is
counter-memory
:: See also: inherited memory of [ er’s fa e ]
:: Today the maroon skin of her fingertip
is an imprint of yesterday’s pour
:: She is made in his image therefore she is
a sieve
:: Inevitably the future sifts through
:: Sieve is another word for counter-memory
:: In both cases the daughter fills in what
remembrance leaves out
:: Liquid decants from the metal carafe until
the bowl is full
Inheritance is the possession of
second sight ::
v.
This body
unravels its
cacophony
across
time
country
wound
the great sea.
This body is a body of water is the
unsaid page. It unravels its invisible
sheaves. A flood of light glistens into
a cacophony of sea birds. I look
through the viewfinder with my
dominant eye. I look across the
endless water. Sometimes my eye is a
stanza with only one long line
attempting to reach you. When does
a country become a window? All
morning I am a metonymic slide.
This body reaches only as far as it
needs to. There is no irrigating a
wound if that wound is the great sea.
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Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet living in Scotland. She is author of chapbooks Hinge (ignitionpress) and Faces that Fled the Wind (BOAAT Press). alycia-pirmohamed.com
Tako Taal is an artist, filmmaker and programmer. At stake in her artistic practice are the psychic structures of colonial relations and the question of how vivid they remain in the present. She was a 2019 RAW Academy fellow at RAW Material Company, Dakar. She lives in Glasgow.
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Text commissioned by Talbot Rice Gallery and edited by Daisy Lafarge as part of the Talbot Rice Residents programme https://www.trg.ed.ac.uk/residents-1
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