Other Possibilities
after Jenny Qi
- While reaching for A Wrinkle in Time, the office chair slips.
You land on your head.
- Wandering in the mountains, you startle a brown bear who
quickly mauls you.
- Spontaneous combustion
- The vitamin C drop does not melt. No classmates notice
that you are choking.
- Toxic shock syndrome
- The college girl with the rundown van drives 10 mph faster.
The sedan door splits like a clamshell.
- Oozing melanoma
- The elevator never rises, but the doors open anyway. Without
looking, you step inside. For five stories, you think of the violets
in Brockport outside of your childhood home.
- One morning, a brown recluse bites you soundlessly.
- After decades of neglect, the Alphabet City fire escape ladder
pulls free.
- Unaccustomed to a gas stove, you do not wait for the knob
click that means the burner is off.
- The prescription label says take two, but you take four instead.
- In Tallahassee, no one finds the old land mine. You trip, and it
chooses its moment to speak.
- Lightning strikes the half-dead oak tree. It flattens the garage
where you are painting your nails.
Little Miss Diaspora Tends Her Altar
What would my ancestors say
about crème brûlée probably
something indignant since
we have custards of our own.
Bhapa doi makes you forget
that it is yogurt but it lacks
a sugary roof it has no
glass to shatter spoonward.
I picture all of them in sepia
which is just how India looks
smeary bindis cotton kurtas
hands quiet behind their backs.
My family does not have a dark
secret it has many
I have gathered most of them
the big ones are predictable :
addict grandpa here shady aunt
there one dead one alive
I worry that the former strolls in
high & gobbles up all the chocolate.
