This is a re-write of a poem I wrote for the Familial Migration documents assignment. I would love feedback and am also interested in moving it into my body soon!
Words NOT Teeth
1. I tried a little reference to water and borders in the 6th line, not sure if it's enough?
2. I tried to make the ending a bit more complex while still being a political statement. What do you think of this ending? In case you want to compare to the original: https://postnatyam.blogspot.com/2017/03/shys-borders-resurfacing-response-3.html
3. Any other thoughts?
Words NOT Teeth
I delicately examine my birth certificate, a frail ink-stained, yellowish paper.
My Father’s name squeezes itself neatly into the tiny box, whose creator didn’t anticipate the Jagarlapudis with our plentiful syllables.
His birthplace: India.
I imagine the huge watery border he crossed and wonder how he was received when he arrived with only $26, a student visa, and his dreams.
The box for “color or race” is not filled out.
I smirk as I observe that it contains a single horizontal line as if to mark the very category itself irrelevant.
43 years later, my year-and-a-half old son, soon to get his passport, perches curiously on a stool, pointing at the camera flash.
We love the smiley picture, but the elderly black man who runs the dingy store warns us that the rules have changed: no smiling.
We choose the one where he looks puzzled instead.
He is wearing his favorite color, orange, unaware of how this color is infamously linked to the 45th president of the United States. Unaware of the president’s travel bans. Unaware that the world’s borders are tightening and that he may never experience the freedom that I have enjoyed with my American passport and my Overseas Indian Citizenship.
This ¾ desi child who knows more Spanish than Telugu, who loves Salsa as well as Bollywood music, and who, like any almost two-year-old, simultaneously tests boundaries and clings to security.
He knows you don’t need a big wall to feel safe. But, like many other almost two-year-olds, he still needs practice with using words instead of teeth.
1. I tried a little reference to water and borders in the 6th line, not sure if it's enough?
2. I tried to make the ending a bit more complex while still being a political statement. What do you think of this ending? In case you want to compare to the original: https://postnatyam.blogspot.com/2017/03/shys-borders-resurfacing-response-3.html
3. Any other thoughts?
