I.
In English, Q is unnecessary,
but English isn’t Josh Monette’s native tongue;
it’s the language of oppression used
to muzzle his tribe, the Makah.
Even that word is a lie, Makah.
“Makah” is the word used by those who did not understand
Qʷi·qʷi·diččaq, Josh’s language in his language.
In English, Q is unnecessary, but
English, like all languages, is a river,
serpentine, that transports,
drowns, rolls, forgets, is
never the same as
one moment before, or
later, or
later,
II.
The Greeks never intended to kill Jews, only Judaism.
B’nei Yisrael could inhale Greece
so long as our exhales sounded sufficiently Grecian.
Devarīm sounded more elegant as Deutoronomy.
Thus, it remained, remains.
Hanukah sounded like an epic myth.
The Greeks did not call us B’nei Yisrael,
what we called each other, but,
instead, Ioudaios, later, Jews.
And the Greeks had a word
for our Temple sacrifices in Jerusalem.
They called it “holocaust.”
III.
Latin ruled England, but never the English.
Alfred the Great defended Wessex and
their oppressed, nascent English.
The genius of English was
and is its adaptability –
like the Mississippi that starts
as a shallow stream in Minnesota and ends up
teaching Huckleberry Finn and Walt Whitman
what it means to be human.
My great-grandparents didn’t know English
when they sailed to Texas. Today, I translate
Spanish and Norwegian and Hebrew into English,
my native tongue,
my way of happening.
IV.
Josh has all the answers
to all the questions
no one is asking him.
He smiles when he teaches me qax̌ak,
which is Qʷi·qʷi·diččaq for “dead,”
but it doesn’t mean “dead,”
it means “not feeling.”
That way, Josh never dies
so long as he feels.
And he feels his tribe
in the first person,
as he always is,
as they always have been.
In English, Q is unnecessary, but
in Qʷi·qʷi·diččaq, it can begin and end
Vox Clamantis in Deserto,
קוֹל קוֹרֵאבַּמִּדְבָּר,
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
the voice of Josh Monette,
the voice of many rivers.