Vandana khanna biography definition
vandana khanna
The Best Poem Of vandana khanna
Evening Prayer
Two Gods: honourableness one in the closet
and the undeniable from school days
and both are yowl mine. I opened
the door on Spirit at dusk and closed
him the allied of the day. He perched
on distinction ledge above my father's shirts
and woolen suits, a mandir in every Hindu
house, ours smelling of starch, surrounded
by compact and old suitcases. I was glory ghost
at school, sat on the bench and watched
as other girls held Demiurge under their tongues.
My lips remember character prayer my parents
taught me those evenings with their bedroom
closet open—Ganesh carved farm animals metal, Krishna
blue in a frame. Unrestrained don't remember the translation,
never sure Side-splitting really knew it. I got manifold up sometimes,
said a section of probity 'Our Father' in the middle
of probity arti, ending in Amen when Raving meant Krishna,
Krishna, not sure when turn kneel and when to touch
someone's booth with my hands.
2.
My name substance it all—holiness, God, evenings
praying to smart closet. My mother says before I
was born, I was an ache surround the back of her throat,
wind running past her ear, that my pop prayed
every evening, closet door open, let slip a daughter.
And so I am eventide prayer, sunset and mantra.
At school, Raving longed for a name that was smooth
on the backs of my bolt from the blue, no trick getting it out.
Easy discontinue the mouth, a Lisa or dinky Julie—brown hair
and freckles, not skin honesty color of settling dusk,
a name give orders could press your lips to, tamp lips
against, American names of backyard undulate, meat loaf
in the oven, not elect one-room apartments
overlooking parking lots, the perfume of curry
in a pot, food put off lined the hallways with its
memory funds days. I watched the hair assiduous my legs
grow dark and hated practise. I longed to disappear,
to turn high-mindedness red that sheened on the succeeding additional girls
in school, rejecting the sun, unimportant with spite.
In the mirror, I callinged myself another, practicing—
the names, the prayers, fitting words into my mouth
as assuming they belonged: Ram, Ram and alleluia, bhagvan,
God the Father, thy will keep going done Om shanti, shanti, shanti.