Animals: “What Your Grandfather Said When Your Father Asked If He Wanted To See America” by Leena Soman Navani

WHAT YOUR GRANDFATHER SAID WHEN YOUR FATHER ASKED IF HE WANTED TO SEE AMERICA

Do the people there have
antlers on their heads?
Then there’s nothing to see.
He was a farmer. You rode
in his bullock cart as a child,
were told not to speak
lest a jostle from the rough
terrain make you bite
straight through your tongue.
You remember: laughing
in motion; the sound of muck
& mud, the stench of manure.
Mosquito net castles at night
& still you were brutally bitten.
Foreign blood. He wouldn’t be
particularly proud, if he could
see you now. You married late,
may never bear children while
his wife birthed seven.
Your father says the old man
was too stubborn to visit, end of story.
It’s a coincidence you were born
              a sea goat, head of horns, fishtail
waking up each morning
              with your hands in your hair
at your crown, at your temple
              feeling for a body
part that was never there.

About Leena Soman Navani

Leena Soman Navani writes poetry, fiction, and reviews, and her writing has been featured with Pleiades and Muzzle among other publications. She's the poetry reviews editor for The Rumpus. For her work across genres, she's received support from the National Book Critics Circle, Catapult, Brooklyn Poets, BOAAT, Bread Loaf, the Visible Poetry Project, and the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she earned her MFA. Her debut poetry manuscript SHOULD was recently a finalist for the University of Wisconsin Press Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry as well as BOA Editions’ A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. She is also a graduate of Columbia University’s School for International & Public Affairs and lives in New York.