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I'm Denice Frohman,

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and this is "Accents."

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my mom holds her accent like a shotgun,

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with two good hands.

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her tongue, all brass knuckle

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slipping in between her lips

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her hips, are all laughter and wind clap.

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she speaks a sanchocho [br]of spanish and english,

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pushing up and against one another,

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in rapid fire

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there is no telling my mama to be "quiet,"

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my mama don't know "quiet."

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her voice is one size better fit all

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and you best not tell her to hush,

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she waited too many years for her [br]voice to arrive

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to be told it needed house keeping.

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English sits in her mouth remixed

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so "strawberry" becomes "eh-strawbeddy"

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and "cookie" becomes "eh-cookie"

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and kitchen, key chain, and chicken [br]all sound the same.

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my mama doesn't say "yes"

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she says, "ah ha"

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and suddenly the sky in her mouth [br]becomes a Hector Lavoe song.

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her tongue can't lay itself [br]down flat enough

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for the English language,

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it got too much hip

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too much bone

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too much conga

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too much cuatro

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to two step

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got too many piano keys

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in between her teeth,

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it got too much clave

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too much hand clap

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got too much salsa to sit still

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it be an anxious child wanting to

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make Play-Doh out of concrete

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English be too neat for

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her kind of wonderful.

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her words spill in conversation

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between women whose hands are all they got

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sometimes our hands are all we got

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and accents that remind us [br]that we are still

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bomba, still plena

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you say "wepa"

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and a stranger becomes your hermano,

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you say "dale"

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and a crowd becomes a family reunion.

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my mother's tongue is a telegram [br]from her mother

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decorated with the coqui's of el campo

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so even when her lips can barely

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stretch themselves around english,

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her accent is a stubborn compass

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always pointing her

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towards home.