Category: Mia Ayumi Malhotra

by Mia Ayumi Malhotra

Praise be to beef liver stew, to gravy biscuits

and home-baked bread, to women

in work pants and suspenders who worked like dogs

in the packing shed, up to elbows

in rose clippings. You fed us well, O goddesses

of goulash and green beans, of Sunday dinners

wrangled from the coop. For penny money

and seamstressing, praise. For parsnips

and sweet potatoes, praise. Even for the years lost

to sharecropping and strawberries, hallelujah.

You worked until the final hour then rose

three days later, baby squalling on your hip,

back to breaking canes, clipping hooks,

hustling the men through lunch hour.

No breaks, boys. Hallelujah to Pond’s Cold Cream,

to curling rags and church bento socials.

Praise to the nursery truck revving in the morning,

the clank of steel pipes and boiler-

house rumble. All glory to the Berkeley streetcar

and Key Route electric train, the smokestacks

of Richmond and foggy peaks of San Francisco.

And because they’re what taught us to praise,

glory to the roses run wild, the packing shed

left to cobweb. Praise to the crowded horse stalls

and half-built barracks of Rohwer, Arkansas,

dusty sheets and muffled nights of Block 9-9-C,

100. Sakai, Chu. 102. Sakai, Ruby. 103. Sakai, Kazue.

O praise to the camp midwives, the Nisei girls

shooting hoops and swatting birdies when their mothers

weren’t looking. And to the college-bound coed

who crossed the country, camp release papers

in hand, hallelujah. Her truth marches on.

from Isako IsakoFind more by Mia Ayumi Malhotra at the library

Copyright © 2018 Mia Ayumi Malhotra
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Mia Ayumi Malhotra

During the war Isako you tell me your sister her daughters half-Japanese turned the neighbors cold this memory Isako a thicket that cannot be breached how it rises to block the sky nights Isako you tell me you darkened the windows readied a pot of uncooked rice for the pit in your front yard deep as a grave Isako out of the wanderings of history you have emerged Isako on this white couch all the body fallen from your bones to hear you speak Isako of war rations potatoes one week yellow onions the next mother riddled with stomach pains is like hearing you speak of another life Isako stumbling through streets bolts of silk clutched to your chest begging for handfuls of rice Isako your uncle whispers something about the city bombed like ash your sister and her two girls drift back to you on the wind your brother soon follows overhead a haze of memory so many lifetimes Isako together we stand mist breaking into little tendrils and drifting away Isako the world so bright and buzzing with activity it is difficult Isako to remember you at the center an obliterated city explosions of light buildings immediately flattened above the thicket Isako smoke rises from another life Isako the wail of air raid sirens the life you lead Isako not so distant as you may think

from Isako IsakoFind more by Mia Ayumi Malhotra at the library

Copyright © 2018 Mia Ayumi Malhotra
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Mia Ayumi Malhotra

Ohio, and I imagine her

walking the train line,

tracks narrowed in the distance.

Through her soles,

the platform’s slats. She feels

their unevenness

in the flats of her feet. Noon-

day heat and the wool

of her jacket’s itchy.

She’s got a bob, it’s 1943

and the war’s on. No one

in the station looks

like her, but everyone’s

looking at her.

No explanation but the one

in government-issued print.

National Student Relocation

Council. Early Release.

The sentry in his watch-

tower, barbed-wire fence

and Stars and Stripes flapping

in the wind. From across

the tracks, a man (here,

imagination does the work

history’s lost) approaches, finger

bared, a blunt accusation.

Aren’t you a Jap? The long

explanation—why she’s out,

whose side she’s on.

The nations we pledge

at odds, leaving us to make

up the difference.

This story’s old, the woman

—dead, papers boxed

in a back closet. I’ve seen them.

Early Release.

The government-issued ID number.

In camp, it’s said, they cut

gardens into Arkansas desert,

fixed rocks into the flat face

of the earth and irrigated

bean rows to feed their families.

Healthy vines appeared

where none should have

grown; tiny buds coaxed

from the earth, tendrils

that spooled runners

through dust.

When the order came

to pack up and return

home, the authorities found

every curtain drawn

shut. Every barrack

floor swept clean.

from Isako IsakoFind more by Mia Ayumi Malhotra at the library

Copyright © 2018 Mia Ayumi Malhotra
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Mia Ayumi Malhotra

No one knows the exact whereabouts

of the ovaries; some things we’re not

meant to remember. After your mom

died, you left your childhood home

for good. Ten years later, it’s intact

only in memory. We siphon slowly

through the city, watch the skyline

slide past. Crossing the Washington

Bridge, you’ve come home at last,

where some things we’re not meant

to hold. Tumors are most frequently

found in the ovaries’ epithelium.

Pressing hand to pelvic crest, I imagine

the incision, sutures. Steel instruments

easing each organ apart. Though this

is where we all began, no one wants

to return. Memory takes its retreat,

shuts the lights off, room by room.

Still, something stirs. Life’s germ shifts

imperceptibly—the future, a tiny, single-

celled fact, a body humming with secrets.

from Isako IsakoFind more by Mia Ayumi Malhotra at the library

Copyright © 2018 Mia Ayumi Malhotra
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Mia Ayumi Malhotra

I buried my face in my hands

and left it there. When my body rose

to pass through customs gate,

life fell back to normal proportions,

and I left. When nobody rose

to follow us through, I sighed,

because life felt normal. Proportional:

mom, dad, brother. Our luggage

followed us through. I lost sight

of the relatives waving from the gate

at mom, dad, brother, our luggage.

I felt strangely unburdened

by the relatives waving. From the gate,

I turned for a final glance,

felt unburdened at last. The strangeness

of American supermarkets.

Turning, I took a final glance

at that unfamiliar world

of American supermarkets.

I was headed home, though

that too felt unfamiliar.

Soon I’d take on new customs,

headed home, though there too,

I’d have to bury my face.

from Isako IsakoFind more by Mia Ayumi Malhotra at the library

Copyright © 2018 Mia Ayumi Malhotra
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.