EAST RIVER

Sky so open 

it could burst any moment—

a blue balloon inflated

over its capacity at the foam

of a child’s mouth. I am nervous

for that child—how will she cut 

her cake after that memory? 

Children are trial, my father said, 

quoting the Qur’an. Unforgiving, 

and they forget everything. 

Two years after his death, 

I remember how much water

he sipped, how much stayed

within him. If all water

indeed has memory, 

why didn’t it leave his body

completely? Is the river

roaring still, crashing

beneath my knees?

I don’t forgive you, 

whoever you are. 

A child without a parent

is still just 

a child.

[I read poems of New York while in New York]

I read poems of New York while still in New York. 

Called lawyers and emailed embassies at home. 

Friends got married and friends got separated. 

Babies were born that resembled neither their

mothers nor their fathers. My own mother profiled

in her own city. Days I wanted to strip off my 

migrancy. Tether to a chunk of earth and be done. 

Riya and I put chromatic nails with cheap glue 

in her bedroom. Yanked them cold the next 

morning. I was told I was loud and I believed it. 

I would have believed anything in those days. 

I never thought I would need my father if he 

didn’t have money. I was told I use I too much

& should stop. Facts blur into fiction. 

No one believes you. 

INTERCAMPUS TRANSPORTATION

I forgot roads spending 

so much time underneath them. 

I entered the church not

in search of god, but what

lay underneath. When my father

died, I stopped believing in my sight. 

That my god resists iconography

gave me strength, though I doubted

my faithfulness. It is November. The leaves 

are held onto the trees by some miraculous wind. 

They flutter & flutter & latch onto thin

branches. I swing by so fast so as not able

to see what holds them. And when I exit

the van, the leaves blooden and burst 

under my rough boots. It is the month of his 

birthday. He’d be sixty, the same age as my 

favorite actor. He’d walk lightly on earth. 

He’d eat all the sweets in the world. 

He’d be gentle in this harsh winter, 

gentler than he had ever been.