What I got away with!

Smuggling myths, memes and memories

“Orange is a lemon…” by Reena Kapoor (c)2022. Instagram @1stardusty

The Smuggler

I arrive with so much more than I declare 

offering him my meticulous all-caps customs form

keeping tight two suitcases, slapped four times

with labels of the university address underlined

No, I don’t have even $1000 in cash

I answer solemnly, then smile, then don’t

Where would I even get that?

*

Yessir, only two suitcases to my name

They’ll have to suffice to build a whole life

What does he even know of what I left behind? 

All he sees is me: riven, anxious, bursting 

for the new world where I arrive 

with not much to my name, even less to declare

Only two suitcases? He asks again

*

So little to declare in my suitcases with

clothes ironed into self-conscious shields 

two pairs of new shoes for places on a paper map

no accounting for the first snow that’ll devour them 

Will I need to sell the pieces of jewelry my mother 

pressed with her tears into my hand?

Tears I won’t understand for another few decades

*

Customs guy barks again, but what else you bringing?

Any food in there? Suspicion deepens his lines

I assure him there is none. No, nothing, nothing really

He slaps my passport back, turns away, lets me pass!

I hesitate to go. So “fresh off the plane”, I’ll come to laugh

Holding dear all tangible goods that cling back to me 

No guilt for what I didn’t declare, besides my literal baggage

*

I didn’t mention the taste on my tongue 

which will torture my senses for rebirth

I didn’t mention the map of home 

imprinted on my skin bursting to build

I didn’t mention colors my eyes thirst for 

in flowers I’ve never seen before 

I didn’t mention that old music that rings

 every morning trailing my dreams

I didn’t mention the torch I carry 

for familiar warmth and touch and love

Sprouting new shoots on my memory tomb 

signed with this new world’s epitaph

Don’t ask an immigrant what she has in her suitcase

She’ll surprise you with mounds of denial

*

All that she brings hidden in her are stories of past life threads

And if you did demand it, she couldn’t show you anyway

She’d have to tear off her skin, dissect every cell to look 

Even then all you’d see is blood and heart and sweat

You still won’t locate it, all that resides, persists 

Yet everything of the new she will remake in her own way

You’ll have to come find her decades later to see…

…what she got away with!

-Reena | 2022

I wrote this poem remembering the time I first arrived in the United States as an earnest graduate student. In a literal sense it’s a laughing remembrance of the third degree I received, tremulously proffering my single entry F-1 visa. As is done with all entrants, my paperwork and belongings, along with my motives for entry, were thoroughly examined by immigration and customs officials.

The poem is also an ode to what those gatekeepers couldn’t have known i.e., what I carried in my heart, head and habit. They probably extrapolated in broad strokes where my life was headed from the ambition, toil, and social conservatism of most immigrants. But my particular sensibilities on ideas of home, what constitutes a happy life, a redefinition of self or the acceptance of a dual - perhaps multitudinous - identity within which I would eventually find comfort and meaning, were lost on them. All of those I stole into this country to build this life.

Internally, the poem is an incredulous yet affectionate recognition of a younger me who, completely unbeknownst to herself, carried the seeds of her own many transformations across that border. All of it was written in that arrival but it can take a lifetime to transcribe such a script. Sometimes even that is not enough and a life goes by unread.

The irony, the argument (mostly with self) and the humor of it all is perhaps best illustrated by my journey as a cook. Because I went from being a strident feminist refusing to enter the kitchen to falling hopelessly in love with cooking. Oh how mightily the mighty fall — or at least reconsider their premises :-)

In any case, there was nothing in that freshly arrived graduate student back then to suggest such a radical change. Quite the contrary. But what she didn’t realize is what an exacting foodie she was, and within that sensibility were sown the seeds of her transformation.

Allow me to tell you that story — next time.

For now tell me if the poem resonates and what skeins and themes it unravels for you from the roads - immigrant or not - you’ve traveled. I always love to hear your thoughts!

Extra!

A new book and a new vehicle for some of my poems! "Starry Nights: Poetry of Diaspora in Silicon Valley" is an endeavor of the heart, a labor of love and an act of startling generosity by two women - Jyoti Bachani and Pragalbha Doshi - and several other collaborators I have never met in person. It is a measure of love in a world where we seem to have forgotten how to give without an accounting to and for our countable benefit, our factional loyalties and our narrow prejudices.

I became lucky in "meeting" Jyoti who unhesitatingly invited me to participate and included ten of my poems in this new offering that compiles work from startling talent among the diaspora in my 'hood aka Silicon Valley. The book is now out on Amazon and I hope you will support this 100% volunteer initiative by getting a copy for yourself and others.

For all books with my poetry see here.