Abundance.
by Jai Dulani
twisted roots stretched out towards each other
Parvati, my mother’s mother jawed Sindhi.
her daughter, refugee camp
Punjabi. matrilineal severed bark.
I spoke English to my mother’s Hindi
not everything makes it upstream
we’re from pre-partition Pakistan.
blood-dripped alliteration we background
each other casual.
my 2nd generation despair,
a pile of scattered
lumber.
Recently, I queried
how will I learn
Sindhi
/
?
Light this other
perceiving.
Ma’s moss covered smile
chiseled into blue sky, “The
internet.” her chuckle
a lush fern valley
Green feathering over green.
the sparrow reeled
out past me.
I inhale the dirt
The solitudes/ the give.
Jai Dulani is a poet, writer and multimedia artist whose work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Waxwing, Foglifter, The Offing, No Tokens, Porcupine Literary, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from Kundiman, VONA/Voices, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Dulani is co-editor of the anthology, The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities. Listen to Dulani read “Abundance” in the July 2020 Golden Walkman Magazine themed issue “Ancestors, Ghosts, Listen” guest edited by W. Todd Kaneko.