ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Vikram Masson is a lawyer by training who lives near Richmond, Virginia. His poems have been recently featured in Young Ravens Literary Review and The American Journal of Poetry.
Also by Vikram Masson:
Two Poems
Wedding Day
Poets Resist
Edited by Daniel Cureton
December 3, 2019
Edited by Daniel Cureton
December 3, 2019
Visa Category: H1-B
After his father snuffed out the kerosene lamp
he stole to the lamppost in the village
and under a sky of spiraling stars,
fitfully sounded English words:
axiom, fractal, conic, quadratic.
He would not, like his father, dye tussar silk
with pomegranate peel and onion skin
into sparkling patterns of orange and blue.
He learned scalar equations, harmonic motion
before a beard could shadow his face
and proved so gifted they sent him to America.
He lives here in a house with four other migrants,
and drudges in Python for 12 hours a day
in a maze of brown faces puzzling at screens
for middle managers who sometimes say,
You speak English better than most of them.
On Sundays, he wires money back to his village
so his sisters don’t pestle rice for a pittance,
and prays at the Radha-Krishna temple,
where he eats prasad on banana leaves
and hears the other migrants whisper,
we may all be sent away.
Tonight, he’s laughing with friends at Applebees.
A man hovers close by, and thinks,
How great would it be to redress a wrong —
to take back a stolen job.
A country, with no place for village boys
sounding words under spiraling stars.
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
