Arts & Events

Writing

By Roopa Ramamoorthi
Friday December 29, 2006

Saturday morning, make to do list 

TV-morning show-Spinach scare in California 

Equation predicting celebrity pairing bliss quotient 

Based on Google hits with skin 

Fashion discounts on designer labels sold through billion dollar babes 

Yes, I need to know all this 

Switch off TV 

Brisk walk with seventy-year-old father 

Who wants to overtake others 

Stop at Andronico to get San Francisco Chronicle and 

sun kissed nectarines 

Surf websites-Biospace, Craigslist 

Jobs-Qualifications-Figure out match quotient 

Emails-delete spam—oh! The usual Viagra, 

XXX, Someone giving money for free 

Just want my ID 

Mahogany magazine, my friend asks if I will write a few lines 

On what beauty means to me, a middle aged woman of color 

Maybe I will, maybe I won’t-- 

Make dal for my father and me—wash dishes 

Feel guilty—I’ve been busy—take my father 

Watch Al Gore movie, ‘Inconvenient Truth’ 

Feel included when movie mentions Bombay Record Rainfall 

Learn Nairobi was built above mosquito line 

Walk home, feel good my Carbon footprint isn’t big, 

Feel elite I know the phrase Carbon footprint at all 

But oh! Petro-cosmetics and synthetic fabrics—maybe 

I shouldn’t buy that pretty pineapple dress with palm trees 

Remember my friend who told me the US cosmetic industry 

Is bigger than the GDP of many African countries 

Go home—cook cabbage peas curry, 

Eat with pasta and tortilla 

A hurry-hurry world 

No time for making chapatti 

Wash dishes sans dishwasher 

Lug my father’s laundry—then mine downstairs 

No dry cleaning solvent, but dump detergent 

Close the door, complete Hedgebrook application essay 

Why as a woman I need six weeks to be cooked and fed 

To write—whatever, whenever—easy essay girl 

Come outside—meet my father’s shrunken face 

“Can we go to see ‘Vajra’-Tibetan documentary?’ 

He asks with childlike curiosity 

I feel guilty again—meeting for two months after two years— 

and I am busy 

The instructor said, “write a poem of the moment” 

At 9pm I shut the door 

Put pen on paper—pull it along 

A poem does not pour out.