Ami Patel
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I palm my soil and it blooms the truth. I have enough for dinner, a salty curry with roasted squash, dark bitter greens, and, of course, garlic. I hug a somber tree and it perks apples like pink balloons. I wake up thirsty to a swaying bhajan of rain, which means my seedlings are ready. Butterflies and red-necked birds come back, gravelly carpenter bees too. They don’t sting. I cascade salt to shrivel the dark bulge of slugs, confound cabbage moths with a single wave. My grandma visits and her cataract-glazed eyes clear like a late spring field. She sees it all: the stippled sword ferns, puckering mint, dusty purple beans staircasing to sky. She is proud, even though she won’t say it. But she can’t deny I have always been hers, sand-blasted blood and desert-cradled bone. Her stubborn root. For her, I demand lush. My harvest will be a succulent bridge, and we won’t have to feign full anymore. |
Ami Patel is a queer, diasporic South Asian poet and YA fiction writer. She is a Tin House and two-time VONA alumna. Patel's poetry is published in decomp journal, Red Rock Review, perhappened mag, and They Rise Like A Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets. You can find her online at amipatelwrites.com and across social media at @amiagogo.