Finnegan Flawnt reads Nora Nadjarian

Surprising and lovely. Inspiring and sexy. Incredible...

Well, if you ask the ladies, anyway.

I'm talking about the voice of Finnegan Flawnt, writer and reader extraordinaire, mentioned before on this blog. He is German, married to an American, lives in Berlin and his name is a pseudonym.

And I was delighted when he said he could relate to my poem and would like to read it.

"Mother Tongue" is a poem I wrote in 2003, at a time when I was considering mother and other tongues. Ironically, I wrote it back then as if my mother tongue was German (which it isn't) and I think it's befitting that a native German gets to read it so beautifully. Et voila, here it is,

MOTHER TONGUE read by Finnegan Flawnt.

Mother Tongue

by Nora Nadjarian

Which language do you dream in,

swear in, cry in, asked the questionnaire.

How many languages do you swim in,

drown in, breathe in, mime in?

Do you know how many tongues have adopted

your voice? And when at night you stare

at dark walls and one pair of lips

comes closer, whispering in perfect German

Ich bin deine Mutter -

Or the night shadows enlarge into a Fritz Lang

open scream and Muttersprache appears

on the silent movie screen, then:

what do you reply? In which language,

and how clearly, do you say: my mother tongue

is somewhere in the recesses of my mind.

I am not an orphan. I have a mother.

She put me to bed one night

and went away. The film we made

together has long been silent. But I still

hear her voice in the keyhole of my heart.

© Nora Nadjarian