Nivi
by and published in Edition Seven of Pomegranate
Laughter bubbles: cheap champagne
pushed deep from bare bellies,
self-born Brahma. Such pretty faces
webbed with curled eyelashes that mock
spiders struggling against the wind.
Bangles and Bengalis clang in the streets:
veiled eyes that whisper dirty jokes to Buddha.
This is Dallas, she whispers and plugs
her ears with her fingertips: block out the city.
Copper pans like copper pigs: useless.
Coffee sits black; milky snow angels curdle
in the sink wishing for cardamom and sugar.
It’s not as clean as her sari. It cannot
be red like an autumn leaf. There is zip-line
appeal to clown school, a medicinal outsource
to bus driving. A baby grand displays
arched fingerprints: they all want to be
train conductors; they all want to jump.
Stephanie Leal
Stephanie Leal is a performance poet based in Norwich, England. She completed her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in 2007, and her first poetry collection, Metrophobia, is due out in June 2009 with Penned in the Margins Press. She is twenty-four years old.