Two Poems
2018; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 93; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.7588/worllitetoda.93.1.0013
ISSN1945-8134
Autores Tópico(s)Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism
ResumoPHOTO: RABE/PIXABAY POETRY Two Poems by Namrata Verghese Guide to Bharatanatyam Your smile, shredded into silver shards across panes of mirrors lining studio walls. Tuck your sari, tight. Open your eyes, wide. You learn, day one – all of five years old and already told you are cumbersome – to dance against the shadows, between the cracks where mildew grows. Smile. There, where one mirror ends and the other has not yet begun, you learn to lose yourself in a pivot. Namrata Verghese is an undergraduate and Robert W. Woodruff Scholar at Emory University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal, PRISM international, storySouth, and elsewhere. Her first collection of short stories, Hyphenated, is forthcoming from Speaking Tiger Books in 2019. Visit worldlit. org to read Verghese’s story “God’s Intern.” Spellbound Win the spelling bee and you will know what it means to be lonely. “You beat them!” my father says. His dark skin tries hard to flush. But I did not beat them; I beat her: Maddy Johnson – blue-eyed, blonde-haired. We are in fifth grade, but our battle is older. Win the spelling bee and you will know what it means to master the tongue that has mastered you. To boast of your victory in the language of your master. My winning word was aubergine: a u b e r g i n e. Aubergine. “I knew you would get it right,” my father tells me in the car ride home, “because it’s a word from Sanskrit.” I smile. I nod. I did not know this. I do not know Sanskrit; I know: Sanskrit. s a n s k r i t. Sanskrit. WORLDLIT.ORG 13 ...
Referência(s)