(After Brynn Saito’s ‘Like Any Good American‘)
I turn my face with acute awareness not giving them even an eyelash
I give my phone unwanted attention
scanning numbers friends who don’t matter
I count down the traffic light 59-58-57 seconds then feign sleep
knuckles rap against tinted glass sometimes they call out
mother, sometimes sister hair matted, mussed up on purpose
at intersections if I should look they’ll pull out my corneas with a grimace
push their scent on my tinted car window
make me clutch my purse tighter
half opened palm the size of my heart beating like a silver coin
that I won’t give because it spoils them
~ Shikha Malaviya
Shikha Malaviya is a poet, writer and teacher. She is founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Project, an online archive of Modern Indian Poetry currently under development, as well as The Great Indian Poetry Collective, a specialized literary press. Her work has been featured in Sugar Mule, Prairie Schooner, Drunken Boat, Water~stone Review, and other fine journals/anthologies. She also founded Monsoon Magazine, one of the first South Asian literary magazines on the web. Her book of poems, ‘Geography of Tongues’, is forthcoming later this year.