haitchling
hhhhhhere you are
whoosh are you—
hoo-win erratum
your tongue’s shadow reattunes
estranges from wartorn & exodus
lore’s
shipwrecked lexicons of
waterlogged-grief
you postwar-aerate
psyop crosswinds
your vocalization’s new medium
trauma-borne emanates
air your new ethos
you thổi bay đi drowned dna
codify your typhốnic
rebirth
amidst hhhhhhhearsay of atmoskinetic ghosts
you sever your breat hhhhh
transfigure your stutter—
your susurrus transcribes itself
aeolian script upon reutterance/persona reformation
your embodied resonance goes phantom irreconcilable sounds
antiaircraft haitch-drop
you can{not}carry over
thôi—
shhhhh/silent letter restriction—
mmmmmphhhhffff—
void set’s gag stitches your reclamation
shut—
hew-wynd—
outstretch your monsoon’s mouthful
you pulmonize the airstream
alchemize into breadthhhh
dismantle & reembody your t h ôi
isolate hhhhhhhhhhhh
littera manifests across
langscape of your rosetta stone—
rehabilitate airticulation in between
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Huynh
you carry thơ across
like movable type
hhhhhushed transliteration of the wind—
into the hor/net’s nest
hor ror in tiếng
việt
r is designated zzzz for alphabetized coda—
what’s your lore—
hunted through dream-murders & slaughterhouses
you diaspora final girl
slay the monolingual monster
it splatters all over you— language attrition’s demon fluid
creeps into your auditory cortex
rewires your phốnemes—
bodysnatches & marionettes
your mother tongue towards
serrated english’s rrrrr
it
force-feeds you
compelled you ingest postalveolarrrrr larva
errrrradicates your vocabularic insides
brood devourer
hive terror
rhotic vowel
retroflex arrrrrrrrrrticulation
hypno-anointed
spiralled sign of yellow
you are yellowsplained murder hornet
Vespa mandarinia
mutant imago of taxonomical hate
self-fulfills & festerrrrrs xeno
prophecy
in wake of mal-lingo
your body horror is still malleable—
enter polyglot of rearticulation
in r evolt shuuun
you limn lexical limb shuffle
nag a ram of Thorn—
tmesis-cut into your orthographic frankenlang
chimera-splice grave accent &
dental fricative
dis-empire yourself upon
multilingual corpus/chorus
Hornéthhhhh
hhhhhhhhhheteroglossia—
Winston Lê is a Vietnamese diaspora poet, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural worker who resides on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples. His writing has been featured in The End Zine, filling Station, ROOted Rhythms, Composed: anthology of poetry 2024, Poetry Pause, periodicities, Sparkling Tongue Press, Ekphrasis Magazine, and pagefiftyone. He is the author of three poetry chapbooks, translanguaging, hybrid utterance, Thhhhh. His debut chapbook, translanguaging was shortlisted for the 2018 Broken Pencil Zine Awards. Winston also has worked on various interdisciplinary collaborations with other artists, including multi-instrumentalist composer, Cameron Catalano, botanical artist, Katrina Vera Wong, and choreographer, Rob Kitsos. In April, Lê was the poet-in-residence at Greywood Arts, an artist residency located in Cork, Ireland.
