Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry

MINAL HAJRATWALA

MINAL HAJRATWALA Author of the nonfiction book Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), Minal Hajratwala is also a poet and performer. Her one-woman show, Avatars: Gods for a New Millennium, was commissioned by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in 1999. Her creative work has received recognition from the Sundance Institute, the Jon Sims Center for the Arts, the Serpent Source Foundation , and the Hedgebrook retreat for women writers, where she serves on the Alumnae Leadership Council. As a journalist, she worked at the San Jose Mercury News for eight years and was a National Arts Journalism Program fellow at Columbia University in 2000–2001. She is a graduate of Stanford University. Identity as platform, not label. My identities include Gujarati, queer, diasporan, San Franciscan, poet, performer, writing coach, editor, recovering journalist, and more. Angerfish I. On the first day the fish wrapped in straw starts to stink. On the second day if you walk by the barn it enters your clothes. That evening your wife sniffs your suit but says nothing. 46 On the third day dressed in your skin the fish begins to walk. Your friends know to hold their breaths. This is not the first time. If nothing else happens the fish retreats to its mean nest. You shower. It sleeps waiting for you. Fish oils soak the hay of the whole barn. The chickens begin to dream of seaweed, of roe. II. In the middle of it the fish is the wisest truest thing you know. It whispers sweet sauces— We are brought here to love, yes, but not blindly. MINAL HAJRATWALA 47 Its jelly eye winks at you codes of Morse— No remorse. Every oracle takes its price, skin for scales, gold for gills. Some days it is a bargain. Or else it costs everything you have. III. I was raised without the fish as some children are raised without candy or time. No one in my family spoke of it as no one spoke then of cities or queers. Somehow in the cradle, rocking, I caught a whiff; or in the crib clutching at rails a bit of fish caught rough in my scream. Swallow. Since then the fish has grown in me like bubblegum or seeds of water melons. 48 MINAL HAJRATWALA Since then we’re bosom tight thick as thieves sealed with a kiss—kin. Is this what I meant when I longed for teeth? Is this what they meant when they named me fish? Soon I shall slit my belly to stroke its silver scales bilious, slippery as love. IV. At last the fish swallows its own tail scale by creamy scale orgy of selfrighteous lips on sharp bone tongue sucking spine vertebra by vertebra teeth shredding gummy ovaries ripe with black meat millions of living egg of fish. Belly full of self MINAL HAJRATWALA 49 soft pulsing heart of fish parallel eyes forehead white gills filled with the last sea. When the fish is all jaw row of incisors grinding plankton coral salt churning oceans like milk into sweet fat gold then I will be ready for you. . . . who “wrap up” anger—that is, wrap around [themselves] repeatedly the anger based on the thought “he reviled me,” and so on, like wrapping up the pole of a cart with thongs, or putrid fish with straw—when enmity arises in such persons, it is not appeased, pacified. —Dhammapada I.4 50 MINAL HAJRATWALA Miss Indo-America dreams Please send me, she says Please send me a banner to lift and separate my gifts Please send me an agent a Bollywood contract a first-desi-on-MTV appearance Please send me a talent a cause for the interview a ballgown to show off my . . . poise Please send me a magazine with my body in it Please send me to Paradise where I will wear the diamond tiara & hula with Bob Barker or Amitabh Bachchan Please send me a rich anesthesiologist & a camel & a needle’s eye to see him by Please send me to the Festival of India parade where I will float above the huddled masses of my people protesters from Khalistan beaten wives straight-A girls immigrants with grease in their hair hiphop boys with baggy pants & worried mothers young white spouses slurping...