The Word for Gossip

Loosely translated in English
means “They say.” Tuscarora
and English do not run through
the cerebral cortex on the same
groove. They are like the Two
Row Wampum, a treaty pronouncing
relationships between our people
and the first white people arriving
on our shores. We made it after
those new people inexplicably
decided the sand and everything
following it was in fact theirs, decided
that because we were not Christians,
their god could not have meant it
for us. Then we said skoden, agreeing and
thinking they agreed, we must each travel side
by side like two canoes, neither crossing
in the other vessel’s movement forward.

Because they are different, the parts can not
be parsed in English. Eee-ogg, or Eee-awk
(depending on your family inflection)
is not neatly divided. Eee is not they,
ogg (or awk) is not say. And no, it’s not
Ewok, the animate Teddy Bears from Return
of the Jedi. And please don’t say “this is too
hard to remember.” If you can learn to say
Tatooine or Alderaan, or Obi-Wan Kenobi,
or god forbid, Jar Jar Binks, you can learn
to say Eee-awk (or Eee-ogg)

Tuscarora is a verb based language,
an action language, where English
loves its nouns more. In English
you want to know who is doing
scandalous things, the activity less
important, as long as it’s juicy.
In English, you want to say “I heard”
and not “They say,” and if you don’t
understand the importance of that
difference, it is good that we travel
our parallel paths, crossing only in
the wake we leave to dissipate behind us.

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“As an indigenous person, I codeswitch constantly, often unaware because of the frequency this act is needed. My work grows from the resulting cultural collisions. I’m also pretty interested in gossip and usually use the Tuscarora word, which sounds very close to the name of a species in Star Wars, and that overlap caused the origin of this poem. These overlapping thoughts led me to recognize that a lot of people commit to memory wholly invented languages and ‘extended universe’ details from popular culture but claim they can’t possibly remember how to say a name that seems even slightly different from the kinds in their peer groups, and this poem emerged from that epiphany.”
—Eric Gansworth