Finally Learn English

At a Spanish kiosk with second-hand books
or in the Thursday morning market,
I think I’ll finally learn English,

and (though it’s my native language and I teach it)
it springs anew in that terrain of fresh ideas,

cities and marshes I knew in dreams
where waking reason becomes enmired in the lotus,

yes, in that place where things come trembling and pristine
with no worldly reservations

and its many phrasal verbs sound Viking and exotic,
its monosyllables fall blunt upon the ears
and all its toponyms invite me.

Yes, I’ll finally learn English
as European learners do:
through subtitled dystopias and sitcoms where canned laughter signals jokes
and you can pause the rapid banter for a slang word,

also through online karaoke where if you nail that tricky vowel,
you earn stars and happy emojis

and by reading Tennyson or the Brontës,
both on sale for 50 cents,
and circling bramble, dusk and yew
because I like them.

Yes, I’ll finally learn English
through educational diversion

(not the messy door of birth,
the golden-yellow halls of childhood,
the mounting casualties
and life’s method
of affixing words in pain).

 

How to Not Cry in Public

Above all, do not think of happy things
(not a childhood pet, a cherished ambition or a grandmother on the line)
whose very absence may draw new tears from the source.

Rather, consider something cold and bureaucratic, devoid of feelings
(e.g.: a thumbtack, a plastic doorstop or one of those tools for removing staples that rarely works)

and if all thoughts come hard and cutting,
soaked in fresh pain like insidious shards upon a wave,

then pour them into autofill
(where mourning comes out Mourinho, suffering surfing and sorrows
sorting columns in your spreadsheet).

 

The Game

In one girl’s fortune-teller, the stakes were higher,
and instead of doctor, mother or teacher
you became a prostitute, a drug addict,

the president, a millionaire, etc.,
each decision apparently small,
yet deterministic in combination with the rest.

The role models could cite pink five yellow
or green eight lilac as the key to their success
if asked to speak at some commencement

whereas others were left defenseless
before the landlord and the judge,
because all people make their choices,

and if you’d wanted a different life
you should have never mixed orange and seven
with magenta.

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Emily R. Frankenberg (New Jersey, 1981) holds degrees in Spanish and English from the University of Delaware. Since 2006, she has resided in Seville, Spain, where she works as a language teacher. Her Spanish-language poetry has appeared in Revista Literaria Baquiana, La bolsa de pipas, Arena y Cal, Alhoja Revista Cultural, and an anthology released by Editorial Zenú. 

Her English-language work has been published in Star 82 Review, Red Eft Review, Amaryllis, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Apeiron Review, and Strong Verse. 

She is currently self-studying Latin and Roman literature.