Louisiana Anthology
Sheryl St. Germain.
“Getting Rid Of The Accent.”
© Sheryl St. Germain.
Used by permission.
All rights reserved.
I thought I had gotten rid of it
after I moved to Texas; speech classes
and twelve years in another state — but I’d
still fall back into it like into the gutter
whenever I visited, even on the phone,
whenever my mother called, forgetting
I was a college graduate, forgetting
I was an English major, saying things
like wheah ya at sweethawt, or
dat doan mean nuttn, ya awta seen
da way she pawks dat caw, the sounds
I was fed like milk as a child, the aw
sound predominating as if it was just
too much work to pronounce the r.
I tried hard to get rid of it,
to make my voice sound
as if I had nothing to do with
the black smell of the Lake,
nothing to do with my mother’s
beans and rice,
nothing to do with my father’s breath,
my brother’s track marks.
Once, after listening to me speak,
a friend snickered, “I can tell
you’re from New Orleans
by the way you say room and leg.”
I couldn’t hear it at first, couldn’t hear
that I was saying rum for room, and layg
for leg. It was the hardest part
of getting rid of the accent,
rum still sounds more right than room,
gets the job done quicker,
with less effort. Leg was hard too
because layg was in me like blood.
It was a word my mother used a lot,
get your laygs off there, Sheryl,
close your laygs, Sheryl, wash
out the tub when you shave your
laygs, Sheryl, but I practiced
and practiced it, the short e
of leg and the long o of room,
squinching my mouth
into the unnatural positions,
working my way from
the voice of my father,
the blood of my brother.
I was not going to sink
as my mother had, lower
and lower into this spongy
land, I would not have my words
sound like the drunken streets,
the ditch-water
that runs by our house still,
infectious, addictive,
when I sing of this place I love
unreasonably more than life
itself, I want the words to rise
strong and true, separate.
Text prepared by:
- Bruce R. Magee
Source
St. Germain, Sheryl. “Getting Rid Of The Accent.” Let It Be a Dark Roux: New and Selected Poems. Pittsburgh, Penn.: Autumn House, 2007. Print. © Sheryl St. Germain. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
L’Anthologie Louisianaise