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# Teaching My Mother English over the Phone
- URL: https://poetry101.love/teaching-my-mother-english-over-the-phone/
- Published: 2021-02-01T22:38:14.000Z
- Updated: 2021-03-14T20:29:35.000Z
- Description: by Eloisa Amezcua
- Author: Melissa Anderson
- Tags: Eloisa Amezcua, #Import 2026-11-04 19:11

I try to explain the difference between pant & pants  
why the former isn’t simply one pair

but what the lungs do with fear or excitement  
why clothe isn’t a singular noun

but what most do to the body each morning  
she calls on a Wednesday needs help

with an assignment for her third English  
beginners course where she meets twice a week

her classmates from countries with names beautiful as hers  
I try to make the language clear to my mother

as she one day —before my English took hold—  
explained to me that I did not in fact make friends

with a girl named Sorry:

*but we were on the playground and she hit me, fue accidenté,* 
 *y me dijo “I’m sorry” & when someone says I am, yo soy—*

that’s not how this works I remind her

when she asks if the plural of dust is dusts  
she asks me to conjugate love

I love you love he loves she loved  
we loved you have loved I am loving

she wants to know how a word can be both  
a thing and an action like war & mistake

although I can’t put into words in Spanish  
how I know the difference so I tell her I have to go

and I go & she goes & I haven’t taught her anything 

Amezcua, Eloisa. [From the Inside Quietly](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780692955482?ref=poetry101.love). Sundress Publications, 2018