Spoiled Child
English is your fourth language
the baby of the family
the one your mouth spoils
favorite by default
who may one day be sold off by its siblings
in hopes to never return
all of your other tongues have grown jealous
your country has over 200 dialects
that’s over 200 ways
to say Love
to say family
to say I am a song
to say I belong to something
that does not want to kill me
& does not want to siphon the gold from my
blood or the stories from my bones
Copyright © 2019 by Pages Matam. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 6, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘Spoiled Child’ is one in a series of poems on the reclamation of country and language. English is one of five languages I hold fluently in reading and writing, and, after reading Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Decolonizing the Mind, I thought to myself, how can I reconcile the traditions and culture as a Cameroonian born and raised writer in the current wave of immigration and oppression of those who are not ‘American’? How do I continue to use the language I have fallen in love with and mastered, which continues to persecute those who haven't had such a privilege?”
—Pages Matam
Pages Matam
Pages Matam is the author of The Heart of a Comet (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014).