Reetika Vazirani (1962-2003): Indian-American poet
Inquilab Hashemi
Poet Reetika Vazirani, who was found dead in Chevy Chase, Maryland on July 18 with her 2-year-old son, an apparent suicide, was born in India and raised in Maryland. At the time of her death she was Writer-in-Residence at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA. She had published two books of poems, White Elephants (1996) and World Hotel (2002), in her short life. Her poetry had energy and panache, along with formal dexterity and control -- her work abounds with sonnets, sestinas, villanelles--so that it was easy to miss its underlying sense of dislocation and homelessness."It's me, I'm not home," she declared lightly in one poem, though the phrase also had a lethal accuracy. Though her verse could be playful and lighthearted, the lightness also masked rootlessness and drift. It's Me, I'm Not Home It's late in the city and I'm asleep.
You will call again? Did I hear
(please leave a message after the beep)
Chekhov? A loves B. I clap
for joy. B loves C. C won't answer.
In the city it's late, I'm asleep,
and if your face nears me like a familiar map
of homelessness: old world, new hemisphere
(it's me leave a message after the beep),
then romance flies in the final lap
of the relay, I pass the baton you disappear
into the city, it's late and I'm asleep
with marriages again, they tend to drop
by, faithful to us for about a year,
leave a message after the beep,
I'll leave a key for you, play the tape
when you come in, or pick up the receiver.
It's late in the city and I'm asleep.
Please leave a message after the beep.
Reetika once said "Culture shock is not your reflex upon leaving the dock; it is when you have been a law-abiding citizen for more than ten years: when someone asks your name and the name of your religion and your first thought is I don't know." To her the past was at times unbearably heavy, while the future offered no comfort. RICE And this is hunger:
beans & rice
beans & rice.
A pang for a meal. You're broke.
Sweet butter on challah. In the eighties,
you had money, everybody did
until the stock market crash
when the lucky got richer.
Spiced chicken on flat wheat,
the chef at Kebabish
cooking for you. An immigrant with no papers
cooking just for you.
The drizzle & snap of oil on fire,
cumin bursting into pulao, biryani.
You rave, a deported illegal
wandering into the night air
sniffing the streets for gravy.
You are nearly crazy with the hint of it.
Keep walking.
It is Main Street & you're a citizen.
Remember the ceremony
& all the coca-cola & hot dogs afterwards?
Or try to imagine your old life.
Being a saleslady in Virginia
is far preferable
to the old way of life
that you lived when you were a queen
called Rani in your native country & the servants
fanned you night & day when you
snapped your fingers.
Inquilab Hashemi is a poet and writer for a rock-n-roll magazine in Maryland.
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