Louhi Pohjola

Mangled

In my early years, Äiti had a mangle
she used to squeeze water from clothing
before hanging it on the line. These froze
in the frost-bound winter into flapping ghosts.

We were residue of an abandoned land, then
residents of French Canada, its confounding
language of s’il vous plaît’s and mais-oui’s
tinkling bell-like on the streets of Montreal,
even as my Isä’s dictate to assimilate meant
we trudged through drifts of English.

My mother wrangled with her new English
words, squeezing meaning out drop by drop,
her phrases jangling. My friends stared at me
blankly when she confused she and he.
My heart dangled apart in the frigid air.

Her new-fangled dryer arrived at the same time
her he’s and she’s became less tangled, the mangle
dismantled and discarded from the humid laundry
room like a clothesline from that other world.

Later, I dreamt my way back into her language
of melody, its lack: of prepositions, articles,
gendered pronouns, a future tense, that instead
of strangling with uncertainties, freed my dreams
to flow untrampled, ample, unbound.

Louhi Pohjola was born in Montreal, Canada, to Finnish immigrant parents. She was a cell and molecular biologist before teaching sciences and humanities in a small high school in southern Oregon. She is an avid fly-fisherwoman and river rock connoisseur and is obsessed with black holes and octopi. Louhi lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and her temperamental terrier. The latter thinks that he is a cat.