Lecciones en inglés: How My Tongue was Tied into a Constrictor Knot
by Joel Sedano
Lesson 1: Construct realities that do not speak or cannot be understood.
Example:
Lesson 2: Language distorts.
Like s’s slushing inside
Salivary glands.
Mi voz se ahoga
Debajocontenedoreslingüísticos.
Example:
Lesson 3: “Language is also a place of struggle” -bell hooks
Example:
Verb and subject directly objects
prepositional object of the adjective,
i before e, except after c—mnemonic
rhyme truantly taunting grammar les-
sons; don’t split infinitives—to care-
fully fuck off as if centuries of in-
doctrination didn’t cleave my tongue,
or twist from violent impositions like
pruned branches; linguistic colonialism
flooding the ravine beset within my
face, drowning echoes of my ancestors.
Lesson 4: “Colonial spatializing: referring to nationalist discourses that esconce a social and
cultural sphere, stake a claim in people, and territorialize the physical landscape by
manufacturing categories and separating land from people” - Mishuana Goeman (Tonawanda
Band of Seneca)
Example:
Structures roll off the tongue as sequences are tooled together and left to swell— taste buds inflamed;
creating fissures
that shift margins of
speech/geographical
patterns, into untrained
terrains; fixating
orally the trajectory
of breath—silent
actions
scraped clean.
Lesson 5: “Language is transformational”- Chelsea Vowel/ âpihtawikosisân (Métis)
Example:
Representation matters/materiality presentation//rep-resent madder/prescient mattered//mis-rep-
resenting mater/pre-sent material//muttering omnipresent.
Joel Sedano (they/them) is a Queer and Trans* poet-scholar of Mexican, P'urhépecha and Wixárika descent. They have an M.F.A. in Writing from Columbia University and an M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University. Currently, they are a third-year PhD student in Theatre & Performance at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Joel's work has been featured in multiple publications, most recently their poem "Post-Prismatic: A Poetic Report 57 Years after Stonewall" was featured in America Is Burning zine by Indigiqueer x Relative Arts.