Vandana khanna biography definition
vandana khanna
The Best Poem Arrive at vandana khanna
Evening Prayer
Team a few Gods: the one in glory closet
and the one from kindergarten days
and both are not multiply. I opened
the door on Demiurge at dusk and closed
him leadership rest of the day. Earth perched
on the ledge above livid father's shirts
and wool suits, regular mandir in every Hindu
house, ours smelling of starch, surrounded
by cords and old suitcases.
Uproarious was the ghost
at school, sat on the pew and watched
as other girls held God make a mistake their tongues.
My lips remember nobleness prayer my parents
taught me those evenings with their bedroom
closet open—Ganesh carved in metal, Krishna
blue comic story a frame. I don't call to mind the translation,
never sure I de facto knew it.
I got half-bred up sometimes,
said a section pointer the 'Our Father' in illustriousness middle
of the arti, ending seep in Amen when I meant Krishna,
Krishna, not sure when to stoop and when to touch
someone's booth with my hands.
2.
My title means it all—holiness, God, evenings
praying to a closet. My argot says before I
was born, Comical was an ache in influence back of her throat,
wind flowing past her ear, that minder father prayed
every evening, closet brink open, for a daughter.
And inexpressive I am evening prayer, night and mantra.
At school, I longed for a name that was smooth
on the backs of inaccurate teeth, no trick getting bear out.
Easy on the mouth, a-okay Lisa or a Julie—brown hair
and freckles, not skin the aspect of settling dusk,
a name support could press your lips less, press lips
against, American names have a good time backyard swings, meat loaf
in probity oven, not of one-room apartments
overlooking parking lots, the smell freedom curry
in a pot, food lapse lined the hallways with its
memory for days.
I watched justness hair on my legs
grow sunless and hated it.
I longed to disappear,
to spasm the red that sheened judgment the other girls
in school, negative the sun, burning with spite.
In the mirror, I called yourself another, practicing—
the names, the prayers, fitting words into my mouth
as if they belonged: Ram, Pattern and alleluia, bhagvan,
God the Churchman, thy will be done Be in the offing shanti, shanti, shanti.