GENTA NISHKU

Runner-Up of the 2022 Pink Prize for Poetry

EMBOUCHURE QUESTIONS THE PAST

i.

​​I deleted all adjectives.

Everything became [       ].

Subject to dictation, I copied words.

We learned to answer when called.

Someone was [  ], said nothing.

What did they mean by voice?

I moved my mouth, called your name,

no sound escaped.

The body, instrument for the voice,

like the oceans at the mercy of waves.

They held their tongues. I made myself mouth.

Your name changed shape.

I tried to mouth again. Again.

A Sunday, in other words, is called regret.

ii. 

Language took a different color.

Frozen like ice, grey-white.

In air too sparse for sound,

we held face to face.

Every new sentence became longer.

But longing, on principle, requires labor.

It’s the fault of the gale. Admit it. 

The swimmers had taken cover, 

Us, alone, braved it without narrative,

Or plot.

iii.

An isolated cove, then. A clear, turquoise water, then. 

Drowned bees on the water, surface tension held only by hope. 

The olive-covered hills, property of capital. Market it: the most [        ]

on the continent. Language takes its revenge. Yesterday, you were victim. 

I wanted to say something definitive, but I arrived too late. 

The mouths had been put away. Ears stuffed in drawers. 

Did you see me? Did you see my lips move? 

And the wind, hissing, and the branches, breaking.

And the rattling walls, the collapsing statues.

Headless, no longer mouthed. 

I voiced it to you, you kept it secret.

Worded it 

to yourself. 

MONTSERRAT SCREAMING

after a sculpture by Julio González

i.

Take inventory. Body: absent. 

Face: facade. Expression: shriek. 

Remove the adjectives. Iron is left,

welded until soft, the shape of a death 

mask, pliable evidence of suffering. 

Tell me, Montserrat, whose story is this? 

Who hears you now? Who sees the burned 

of your flesh? What frequency captures 

the empty of your scream, that echoes, 

forever, against the cold of your metal,

your body articulated into absence, 

your pleas to the gods who carry 

the names of men. Against their unspeakable, 

the challenge of your presence, Montserrat.

Who denies you now? Who claims you

voiceless? Ungoverned by their time, 

their laws, you become a pendulum 

unswayable, despite season or latitude.  

ii.

For Julio González, the shrieking human face was the most sublime expression. 

He sculpted, and painted, screaming head after screaming head. Their cries frozen in straight lines of abstract faces, the cries silent, but the expression so pained, so distinct from all other human experience, that no one looking could escape without seeing the screams. His screaming subjects are women, common and plain, kerchiefs covering their hair, knotted by their throats, concentrating our attention on the mouth. Lonely colorless figures, they clamor to be heard, Montserrat he named them, the common name, the one he forged out of iron, unglorified parable of all wars, grotesque twist of the mouth, a mouth filled with empty, a mouth’s unuttered scream.

iii.

Once, I heard of women

connected by invisible

threads of sorrow: 

a scream across lands &

oceans. Over there, hands

held out in supplication, 

over here, the wailing 

gone mute. They called

them kore, they called 

them montserrat, called

them hopeless, waiting 

ones, declared their 

speech untranslatable.

Have you never felt

all the ways to say 

lament? 

A HISTORY OF TEETH

A tooth key used as metaphor

means so little. Why delay the facts? 

The rich always knew how to hold 

power, manifest it as beauty. Teeth, 

ripped from the poor, volunteers, 

they’d say, into the mouth of ladies 

& gentlemen. Who speaks then? 

Whose macabre jaws give voice to 

the gospel, the constitution, the decree?

In the market for human teeth, losers 

inherit smiling gaps & distorted speech: 

onomatopoeia of the hopeless resounds 

in abscessed mouths. Do you hear it? 

It says, this is not a mouth, but a gape.

This is not a mouth, but a clot. Not a 

mouth, but sound: empty and coagulated.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Genta Nishku lives in New York and was raised in Tirana. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in the Kenyon Review, Bennington Review, Washington Square Review, Barzakh, B O D Y, CHEAP POP, and others. Find her at gentanishku.com.