He shakes your hand
in a crowded room, he shakes
your hand and leans in close
to whisper I like your accent.
A long moment while two questions
wind like tops in your head. One: why
is he whispering? Is the secret
my accent or his liking?
Two: what accent?
Dropped consonants, intonation,
swallowed vowels. He heard you
speak and heard the town your
mother was born in. A woman’s
voice is never not
a feminist issue. Speaking up
means speaking.
To be foreign, even falsely,
is an instructive privilege
for the minutes you’re allowed
to wear that borrowed coat.
Your rural roots sound
exotic to his urban ear and
there are places where being born
three hundred miles away
makes anyone a barbarian
despite global citizenship
so you say thank you with
your prairie accent, putting
the Turtle Mountains and the
General Strike behind
the words, and say it for all
the times your mother
refused to speak in public, for
the professor who wished aloud
that you were more urbane, for
your grandmother’s twitching
lips, for Nellie McClung’s
mock Parliament and Margaret
Laurence’s nuisance grounds. By our
goddamn accents you shall know us.
