
ESL is the Greatest Language on Earth

—
Hannah van Binsbergen
I don’t want to write in English. Viral fog that overlays the groundwork that still holds us dear
hides the trees’ insane and goodly glamour and that wants us back but we can’t go yet.
We have to travel thru our English.
I really need to talk to you. Even if there is no home, no promise of a nation to back you in a fight or when you get an illness; that English is just sexy men and women
strutting their stuff at a certain remove.
It’s not that I speak proper English. I write the words of love in the between times.
Made a better grammar that the wind blew out my brain. I hope you catch it
and it makes a bigger better sucker out of you.
I am
trying
to talk
in the
language
we are
trying
to talk
together.
In that numb state we listened better.
Laughter we did not expect. It rang so.
Loud not out of joy but joy was in it:
a world pronounced lost is mocking us.
Haha it’s saying who are you
you can’t shoot down my propositions
you can’t reject my dangerously pure
and wholesome love. Haha. It’s me:
The world.
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Hannah van Binsbergen is a poet and novelist based in Amsterdam. She has published two poetry collections and a novel in Dutch. She has recently begun writing in the biggest language on earth: English as a second language.
Website | Substack | Bluesky | Instagram
hides the trees’ insane and goodly glamour and that wants us back but we can’t go yet.
We have to travel thru our English.
I really need to talk to you. Even if there is no home, no promise of a nation to back you in a fight or when you get an illness; that English is just sexy men and women
strutting their stuff at a certain remove.
It’s not that I speak proper English. I write the words of love in the between times.
Made a better grammar that the wind blew out my brain. I hope you catch it
and it makes a bigger better sucker out of you.
❊
I am
trying
to talk
in the
language
we are
trying
to talk
together.
❊
In that numb state we listened better.
Laughter we did not expect. It rang so.
Loud not out of joy but joy was in it:
a world pronounced lost is mocking us.
Haha it’s saying who are you
you can’t shoot down my propositions
you can’t reject my dangerously pure
and wholesome love. Haha. It’s me:
The world.

Hannah van Binsbergen is a poet and novelist based in Amsterdam. She has published two poetry collections and a novel in Dutch. She has recently begun writing in the biggest language on earth: English as a second language.
Website | Substack | Bluesky | Instagram
