Parvinder
Mehta,
PhD (English) is an Indian-born, Sikh American writer and educator who lives in
Michigan, USA. Her academic work focuses
on immigrant identities and cultural formations as represented in Asian
American writing and films. She teaches Liberal Arts and English courses at the
undergraduate level. Her academic writings have been published in Journal of
South Asian Diaspora, Journal of South Asian Popular Culture, South Asian
Review, Sikh Formations and Journal of Foreign Languages and Culture. Her
poetry focuses on marginalized voices and social justice issues and she is
currently compiling her poems for her first book of poetry
Never Enough
“So, here you are too foreign
for home
too foreign for here. Never
enough for both."
– Ijeoma Umebinyuo
Walking down the memory lane,
I see
a shadow, an apparition from
another past:
a forgotten ghazal from
youthful days.
Memories, like pieces of an
incomplete
puzzle, struggle to belong
hesitatingly whisper to me.
“Will you ever sing us? Remember
us?”
Those squiggly uncomposed
lines,
nudge me to recall that home
I lost.
Thoughts chug out as painful
birth
of an impending doubt,
those images from homes
begone
haunt me as an unwound clock.
I begin to remember but my
thoughts evaporate
before utterance of feelings
for
my foreignness of being never
enough.
A
tug of war
So,
it seems like a tug of war
I
try to balance my multiple pulls
and
pushes from a life known there
to
a life lived here.
Many
homes, many languages,
many
ideas, many apparels,
many
flavors,
many
experiences
many
privileges, and many prejudices
dislocate
and relocate me. I sometimes
swirl
like a spinning top until
dizzy
spells bring me to my
ultimate
reality as the top slows
down,
staggering like a blind woman
lost
in a maze, resigning her failed ambition
to
venture forth. Stuck between nostalgia
and
glory of the past, I wait for the promise
of
a future when you will finally tell me:
yes,
you belong with us,
yes,
this is indeed your home.
I Too Will
Sing America: A Dream with Langston Hughes[1]
Yesterday Langston came to me
in a dream. Beaten in hate, I
laid
in Harlem. With caution, he
pulled
my bruised, frail body
up. Following his
footsteps, I measured hope
and courage
with each stride as a
rhapsody ensued.
“I know you- I hear you- I
see you.
Like me, pining those dreams
for freedom
you rise above the scorching
gaze
of otherness. My melodies of
pain
from yesteryears are your
poetry of justice
today. Sing on, my friend,
rise!
Let the optimistic notes
soothing my hungry soul
inspire your brave spirits
too.
Your symphony of respect
and rhythms of compassion
will resound and heal those
arrhythmic hearts full of
hate.
Sing on, my friend from
different
shores, the zenith portends a
colorful dawn with hues of
humanity
acknowledging your
difference,
appreciating our sameness.
Embracing ignorant fools,
that know not you yet,
you too will sing America.
Till then live well, serve
well
and sing well.”
I wake up from the punches
of reality. Brushing off
the dust of xenophobia,
warding off
those splinters of racism, I
remember
my roots of gratitude, and
embrace all
[1] In
September 2013, a Sikh American professor named Prabhjot Singh became victim of
a hate crime in Harlem, NY when he was attacked by a crowd of young
Islamophobic men. This poem was first published in In All Other Spaces: Diverse Voices in Global Women’s Poetry, eds. Roopali Sircar Gaur and Anita Nahal (New Delhi:
AuthorsPress, 2020).
Cuts deeply into the very bone . Experiencing immigrant lives its loneliness and isolation.
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