ditch,

Kemeny Babineau's latest book is VDB Wordlist published by Bookthug. Prior to that
was The Incomplete Tree Guide. He also edits and publishes the esoteric
lit rag-mag The New Chief Tongue. He lives in Mt Pleasant with his wife
and two girls.

In 1634 Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert traveled with two other Dutchmen into the Mohawk and Oneida territory of the Six Nations in upper New York State. He kept a journal and made an extensive wordlist. Iroquoian linguist Gunther Michelson has added an English and modern Mohawk translation. Using the technique of erasure I have attempted to create a tri-language collage of then, and now.

1

Maquase Spraeck

                   duffels laecken

                                                   cloth

dissels   messen   lennet

leepels   kettles   spyegels

ondach   utak

tasaskarisat

looking glass scissors

Elsen Yser awl

5

onera vagina dreck

de blaes   onsaha   de klooten

een ship and canoe

water   fire   oyente

broodt   beans   oneste

flour meat         satsori   slurp!

6

grooten honger,   augustuske

I get cold

                    ten duecht niet

   no good

satewa   doot   alone

doubly   sieck

aghihi

I could die

7

in the sky

                    du lucht

                                       the sun

                   de sterren

Asistock                          sow!

a castle,   a waterway

Een Kill

               on the lake, lachen

we are chuckling

                             yukwayeshu

  VDB Wordlist

by Kemeny Babineau

BookThug, 2007

(click here to order)

A Short Reply to Wyndham Lewis


at the numinous
is where we gain it

and without
we are that
automata

acting in pain, to force
satisfaction
like a ventral wall

click and snarl

labial spool

we can be made

to do to...

the wide throat dog

dangles off regret

in diminished angles

over patio pitter pat

deceit is on the rise

to each increase of blindly

meaning wars a shadow

cut out forest crepe