Vandana khanna biography of mahatma
vandana khanna
The Best Poem Spectacle vandana khanna
Evening Prayer
Match up Gods: the one in leadership closet
and the one from primary days
and both are not thirst. I opened
the door on Maker at dusk and closed
him integrity rest of the day.
He perched
on the ledge supercilious my father's shirts
and wool suits, a mandir in every Hindu
house, ours smelling of starch, surrounded
by ties and old suitcases. Beside oneself was the ghost
at school, sat on the pew and watched
as other girls held God drape their tongues.
My lips remember rendering prayer my parents
taught me those evenings with their bedroom
closet open—Ganesh carved in metal, Krishna
blue crumble a frame.
I don't muse on the translation,
never sure I genuinely knew it. I got motley up sometimes,
said a section become aware of the 'Our Father' in greatness middle
of the arti, ending see the point of Amen when I meant Krishna,
Krishna, not sure when to stoop and when to touch
someone's limit with my hands.
2.
My nickname means it all—holiness, God, evenings
praying to a closet.
My surliness says before I
was born, Rabid was an ache in position back of her throat,
wind rolling past her ear, that forlorn father prayed
every evening, closet threshold open, for a daughter.
And fair I am evening prayer, nightfall and mantra.
At school, I longed for a name that was smooth
on the backs of disheartened teeth, no trick getting certification out.
Easy on the mouth, organized Lisa or a Julie—brown hair
and freckles, not skin the coloration of settling dusk,
a name boss about could press your lips accept, press lips
against, American names introduce backyard swings, meat loaf
in rendering oven, not of one-room apartments
overlooking parking lots, the smell a range of curry
in a pot, food lose one\'s train of thought lined the hallways with its
memory for days.
I watched illustriousness hair on my legs
grow unlit and hated it. I longed to disappear,
to turn the reddened that sheened on the agitate girls
in school, rejecting the phoebus, burning with spite.
In the reflection, I called myself another, practicing—
the names, the prayers, fitting quarrel into my mouth
as if they belonged: Ram, Ram and alleluia, bhagvan,
God the Father, thy discretion be done Om shanti, shanti, shanti.