ALYCIA PIRMOHAMED still wanjo7
Tako Taal, You Know it But it Don’t Know You, HD video still, 2017



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.

*

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.

*

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

*

You Know It Final pdf Page 1 Enlarge
You Know It Final pdf Page 2 Enlarge
You Know It Final pdf Page 3 Enlarge
You Know It Final pdf Page 4 Enlarge
You Know It Final pdf Page 5 Enlarge