Literary Safari

I first heard Garrison Keiller read this poem a few weeks ago on The Writers Almanac, and I liked it so much that I found myself reading it over and over again.

Bullies, playgrounds, childhood. The three are so often inextricable. Add culture, gender, and identity to the mix, as Aimee Nezhukaumatathil did, and you have this memorable poem.

After Challenging Jennifer Lee to a Fight
I hesitate, because what would my father say? My aunts in India
are swathed in sarees, glass bangles and crimson nails.
Their perfect ropes of hair, oiled and glossy black, never
betray them to the wind or the chase of a chicken

in the courtyard. They’d watch my grandmother
shape bricks of dark halva, wrap each one
in tight plastic they’d chill for days.
Always calm, serene.

At least, that’s how my father
tells it, but I know when pressed,
my aunts would have done the same thing.
Jenny Lee called my younger sister

Shrimp in front of the whole group of Bus Kids—
no way I could let Jenny just swing her pink backpack
all the way home. Once the bus pulled away
from our stop on Landis Lane, I tapped her

on the shoulder and, and-we were a mess
of ribbons and slaps. She was easy to scare
from my nail marks drawing tiny pinpricks
of blood on her arms, her puffy cheeks. I told her

the red dots meant she had rabies, that
she shouldn’t tell anyone because then she’d infect
them and most of all, she better say sorry to my sister,
else I’d push her face into the barrel cacti littering

the sidewalks. My first rage, my first fire. Jenny
sniffled Sorry and I was relieved: I wasn’t sure
I could hit much more and my skinny legs
were spent with dust and sweat. My sister

and I walked home in silence. If we wore sarees,
all the yards and yards of shiny sateen would’ve
unwound from our tiny bodies, too light to drag
in the dust, too proud and taken with wind, like flags.

The poet tells me that this piece stems from a true incident: “My mother is Filipina and my dad is from Kerala [South India] so kids in suburban Phoenix didn’t know what to do with us!”

Credit: From At the Drive-In Volcano (Tupelo Press, 2007). Reprinted with permission of the author.

For a complete round up of Poetry Friday posts, please drop in at Big A little a later today. You’ll be so glad you did!