Pop Rocks
My sister and I are playing
outside.
She opens a small pack
of rock candy.
She grins then pours some in
my hand.
She whispers,
“Close your mouth.
Don’t chew.”
The sound of rain in our mouths.
In the desert,
the clouds play hard to get.
For days, like this.
Two Indians in a town
where boredom grew divorce
and death.
We go inside and summer is
all over us,
the warmth of a star’s fire.
My sister opens the fridge
and gets the cheese.
I get the paper plates down and open
a tortilla package.
She pours the yellow shreds
so cautiously on two
like she’s designing something.
We watch the cheese bubble
in the microwave and
the room goes dark.
I close my eyes.
Thunder nurturing clouds.
Just one way I know the sky to pray.
Self-Portrait as the Distance Between Wherever You are Standing
and the Origin of the Universe That We Simply Cannot Find
What a grand life any telescope has in space.
These false colored images just to see what is true.
I once read as a child if you walked around
a single Saturn ring, 90 years would pass.
So, I cycled around the neighborhood and back,
and it was merely time for dinner.
I didn’t say anything to my mother when I sat down
at the table to eat, but I felt happy, relieved.
When the evening arrived, it was stars after stars.
I like grand things— grand pianos, grand openings,
grandmothers, grandfathers.
Grand. I like the sound it makes when I say it.
When I finally figured out the sky was not a ceiling,
what a thrill!
What a squeeze I am
in a billion over a billion over a billion
over a billion over a billion over a billion over a billion
over a billion.
That hyphen between Asian and American
is my gate at the airport,
my layover.
I found myself crossing back to India as an adult
for a visit after I had reached a point
where being an American felt like a test I kept failing.
I still keep failing to be an American,
even with my citizenship, but what can I say?
The American dream is dead to me, but it’s okay.
Not sure it’s called that anymore.
It at least tastes good if you cook it the way you
want it.
Mine calls for lots of ginger and garlic.
They say your life isn’t about you,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤbut that can’t be entirely true.
But do put your hand on
your chest to know who runs your life.
My heart doesn’t need my help
making it beat, a gift I no longer
confuse with being Asian nor American.
Waiting on that hyphen,
I always fulfill flight connections, believing the only
permanent address for me is an airport.
I need to stop calling the world an unsafe place.
Sure, it can be.
“Are you in a safe place?” my mother asked me
when my heart was broken
meaning “Where are you?” and “Have you eaten?”
and “Please dress warmly.”
I hugged my mother under the Milky Way
one night in northern Arizona,
knowing now that there is only a hyphen until
you decide there isn’t one.
Identity shouldn’t feel like you’re losing your eyesight
from looking for it. Chances are you won’t find it.
Don’t forget to look back either when doing so,
for someone is calling out your name.
Someone is calling you in for dinner.
Jeevan Anthony Narney was born in India but grew up in Arizona. He is an Indian-American Adoptee poet. His work has appeared in the Georgia Review, Blue Mesa Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Verse Daily, Terrain.org, Beloit Poetry Journal, and the Nimrod International Journal for which he won the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize judged by Tarfia Faizullah. He received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. He’s done residencies at Arteles Creative Center and Vermont Studio Center. He currently lives in Belgrade, Serbia.