No Bumper Sticker

he doesn't look like a Citadel Cadet
no crew cut looks at me nudges my arm
in Comp want a hamburger?
I say since when do Hindus eat them
you a Hindoo? we pass

the English novel class his sister Faye
winks won't tell Dad Jack
I ask him what he says to be
Lakshmi Meera Narayan with him
means going undercover in his Jeep

I look for decals on his dashboard
anything to steer me no
sign we order lunch
got it he opens his wallet
gunning the engine he mentions a bed

and breakfast what? he drives
to the Rose Garden taupe walls pink
fabric softener tassels cameos
no Reb flags hidden in his britches
a personal ad says gay white male

offering free weekend to active
duty guys no fats or fems
I've always dated white men why no
New Delhi prep school boys? no Chinese
no African cause doing it with him

I'm neon he's my peroxide
shelling out sixty-five to the owner
is this Bombay's red light zone or
Patpong he's German self-exiled I'm
the Asian trump card up his sleeve

what does it mean? I can't find
the emblem a bottle of Calvin Klein
rolls out from under the seat back to
Five Points Kali and Ray stenciled
in cement at Papa Jazz's sidewalk sale

he loses me for a white girl up ahead
déja vu like something tatooed
on his shoulder I must've seen
my skin blues under fluorescent
catcalls I can't tell my father about

men I date can't tell the difference
between Jack and Jake until it's me
making sure my lipstick's on and
he's gone a vanishing point
on my face never turned me porcelain

Reetika Vazirani, a book review editor of Callaloo, is Writer-in-Residence at Sweet Briar College. The author of a volume of poems, White Elephants (Beacon Press), her poetry has also appeared in The 2000 Pushcart Prize, Best American Poetry 2000, Kenyon Review, The Paris Review and others. Born in India, educated at Wellesley College, Boston University, and the University of Virginia, she has lived most of her life in the South, in Maryland and Virginia.

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