(Multi)Lingual.io

by Angela Acosta

Four generations too late,
they became giddy children
clucking along with pollito, chicken,
cohete, rocket, estrella, star, 
un abecedario, an alphabet of translations. 

They recovered a language from audio files,
feeling for tendrils of morphemes and vowel sounds,
relishing in tongue twisters, exercising unused muscles.  

Four generations too late,
they had to make sense of how thick hair
and brown eyes came from somewhere,
how they themselves were already inhabiting el más allá.

They savored the new horizons ancestors spoke for them, 
holding back tears when they started 
rolling their rr’s and doubling ll’s. 

Four generations too late,
but right on time for a (Multi)Lingual.io
revival of las lenguas antiguas,
la langue et la parole, a metalinguagem do português,
Nahuatl and Quechua catching a ride on their names.

Mistakes were made aplenty, awash in stardust,
slippages and translanguaging rocking, but never 
shaking the foundation of their capacious syntax. 

Angela Acosta (she/her) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at Davidson College. She is a 2022 Dream Foundry Contest for Emerging Writers Finalist, 2022 Somos en Escrito Extra-Fiction Contest Honorable Mention, and Rhysling finalist. Her writing has appeared in Shoreline of Infinity, Apparition Lit, Radon Journal, and Space & Time. She is author of Summoning Space Travelers (Hiraeth Publishing, 2022) and A Belief in Cosmic Dailiness: Poems of a Fabled Universe (Red Ogre Review, 2023).