BY ADRIAN SLONAKER
Since the labour pains promptly followed
the devouring of a veggie vindaloo,
the baby was named “peppery”
in Esperanto, the lingua franca shared by
her Hungarian panjo and Turkish paĉjo,
and it’s still the only language
six-year-old Pipra can prattle in
to her gepatroj, her hundo or anyone else.
Initially home-schooled after
being bundled off as a baby
to Ameriko from Germanujo
she is now being relegated to
Pleasant Prairie Primary
to learn la anglan lingvon and make friends
since “a child is not a sunflower
and cannot bloom in isolation.”
Yet Pipra’s locked up
in linguistic quarantine
because she can’t comprehend “cloakroom”
or “closet” or even “please,”
and she’s as much of a blinking curiosity
as the toad in the classroom aquarium,
stared at by a lopsided ring of wide-eyed faces
that mock and giggle and spit out confusing strings of
strange nasal words that end with a thud in consonants
because kids are wicked
to the weak and the weird,
and the teacher is too overworked
to notice or care.
AERODROME 