Arts & Events
Writing
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.