Jessica Mehta
Jessica (Tyner) Mehta is a Cherokee poet and novelist. She’s the author of four collections of poetry including Secret-Telling Bones, Orygun, What Makes an Always, and The Last Exotic Petting Zoo as well as the novel The Wrong Kind of Indian. She’s been awarded numerous poet-in-residencies posts, including positions at Hosking Houses Trust and Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England, Paris Lit Up in France, and the Acequia Madre House in Santa Fe, NM. Jessica is the owner of a multi-award winning writing services business, MehtaFor, and is the founder of the Get it Ohm! karma yoga movement. Visit Jessica’s author site at .
Published 06/10/17
Published 06/10/17
"Alpha to Omega"
You get cookies at the Gujarati temples, proof
that you were good. That you showed up. That you whispered
the right prayers to the right idols. (Of course,
I didn’t know the prayers. I followed you like a puppy,
quiet and obedient). Here’s what I learned: It takes
the exact same time for you to say the prayers
as it does me to recite
the Greek alphabet in my head (a hangover
from the college years). Alpha, tap the turmeric
blend on the forehead. Beta—the same word
your mother calls me (daughter). Gamma,
wonder why I had to cover my hair
when all these other women didn’t.
Delta and Why aren’t these people looking
at me? Am I not so different? Epsilon,
these are the smells of your childhood,
the sounds of your memories. All the way
to Omega, the end and the sweets.
I’ve always loved desserts, the rewards
that close those firsts and leave a slick
of guilt on your tongue, crumbled
evidence of goodness on lips.
"Odense Zoo"
The Danes dissected a lion before
a puddle of children. Cut him right
up, pulled the hide spread eagle
in a mockery of pornography—the kids,
they reacted like us all. Fingers creeping
over eyes, but still
they couldn’t look away. It’s important
the children see
what the insides look like, an old man
told a news reporter while his granddaughter
clutched at his trousers. What would they see
if they did that to me? Tore my insides apart
like barbeque, rutted around
in my intestines like pigs in muck, held
up my heart as a prize? Would it be
so incredible, so grotesque?
Would the children peer
between pudgy fingers and pinch
their nose at the stink? I can’t imagine
I’d hold nearly as much interest,
that the outcry would be so deafening
because I,
I am not beautiful. I am not rare. I don’t scare
you when you happen
across me prowling hungry in the night.
"Columbidaes"
Your family stitched the sagai together just like that
and the pigeon couplet cooed pillowtalk at dawn.
I was taught how deep to bend, to whom to bow
and the art of brushing feet with hennaed hands.
My pigeons cooed sweet nothings in the pink
while my Gujarati ran dry, Hindi bled into high school Spanish
and the art of brushing your grandfather’s feet
was a play at submission nobody believed.
My Gujarati dried up, Hindi bled into Tico Spanish
as your mother fed me eggless cake and pani puri.
we played at submission, everyone pretended
a gori was good enough for the eldest.
Maa fed me pani puri and eggless cake
the day I drowned in chaniya choli because
a gori was good enough for her eldest, so
your family stitched the sagai together just like that.
"The Lumber Yards"
Like everyone else, my father
worked the lumber yards, coming home
smelling of sawdust and killed woods. He fell
the trees of the Great Northwest after prison,
working his way up to the cushy
foreman job. All I do is press a button,
he would say. In first grade, we had to write
to Congress, our Senator and the papers
about how terrible it all was, the poor owls
driven from Home one sawed down pine
after another. Those homeless owls
are what gave me Barbies, weekly trips
to the video store, a father who came home
at the same time each day, aromas of the forest
and chip shavings on his jeans. He was
the mill, those weighty logs stacked neat,
the brown shaved off and bound tight
in ropes and chains. Forget the owls,
the protesters, all the wild things buried
deep in the mountains or on garish display
in the streets. A tree doesn’t die when it falls
any more than he did. It’s reborn, re-created,
turned into something nice and tamed,
something to be used and enjoyed, then discarded
as if what it became wasn’t short of a miracle.
You get cookies at the Gujarati temples, proof
that you were good. That you showed up. That you whispered
the right prayers to the right idols. (Of course,
I didn’t know the prayers. I followed you like a puppy,
quiet and obedient). Here’s what I learned: It takes
the exact same time for you to say the prayers
as it does me to recite
the Greek alphabet in my head (a hangover
from the college years). Alpha, tap the turmeric
blend on the forehead. Beta—the same word
your mother calls me (daughter). Gamma,
wonder why I had to cover my hair
when all these other women didn’t.
Delta and Why aren’t these people looking
at me? Am I not so different? Epsilon,
these are the smells of your childhood,
the sounds of your memories. All the way
to Omega, the end and the sweets.
I’ve always loved desserts, the rewards
that close those firsts and leave a slick
of guilt on your tongue, crumbled
evidence of goodness on lips.
"Odense Zoo"
The Danes dissected a lion before
a puddle of children. Cut him right
up, pulled the hide spread eagle
in a mockery of pornography—the kids,
they reacted like us all. Fingers creeping
over eyes, but still
they couldn’t look away. It’s important
the children see
what the insides look like, an old man
told a news reporter while his granddaughter
clutched at his trousers. What would they see
if they did that to me? Tore my insides apart
like barbeque, rutted around
in my intestines like pigs in muck, held
up my heart as a prize? Would it be
so incredible, so grotesque?
Would the children peer
between pudgy fingers and pinch
their nose at the stink? I can’t imagine
I’d hold nearly as much interest,
that the outcry would be so deafening
because I,
I am not beautiful. I am not rare. I don’t scare
you when you happen
across me prowling hungry in the night.
"Columbidaes"
Your family stitched the sagai together just like that
and the pigeon couplet cooed pillowtalk at dawn.
I was taught how deep to bend, to whom to bow
and the art of brushing feet with hennaed hands.
My pigeons cooed sweet nothings in the pink
while my Gujarati ran dry, Hindi bled into high school Spanish
and the art of brushing your grandfather’s feet
was a play at submission nobody believed.
My Gujarati dried up, Hindi bled into Tico Spanish
as your mother fed me eggless cake and pani puri.
we played at submission, everyone pretended
a gori was good enough for the eldest.
Maa fed me pani puri and eggless cake
the day I drowned in chaniya choli because
a gori was good enough for her eldest, so
your family stitched the sagai together just like that.
"The Lumber Yards"
Like everyone else, my father
worked the lumber yards, coming home
smelling of sawdust and killed woods. He fell
the trees of the Great Northwest after prison,
working his way up to the cushy
foreman job. All I do is press a button,
he would say. In first grade, we had to write
to Congress, our Senator and the papers
about how terrible it all was, the poor owls
driven from Home one sawed down pine
after another. Those homeless owls
are what gave me Barbies, weekly trips
to the video store, a father who came home
at the same time each day, aromas of the forest
and chip shavings on his jeans. He was
the mill, those weighty logs stacked neat,
the brown shaved off and bound tight
in ropes and chains. Forget the owls,
the protesters, all the wild things buried
deep in the mountains or on garish display
in the streets. A tree doesn’t die when it falls
any more than he did. It’s reborn, re-created,
turned into something nice and tamed,
something to be used and enjoyed, then discarded
as if what it became wasn’t short of a miracle.