Nanya Jhingran
False Alarm
Sensing Collateral
Proclamation
Window Shopping
Last night, having fled the house
after fighting with you over
the last of the pickles, I decided
enough is enough, I will buy
a house of my own. Then all the lasts
that accrue to me will be guaranteed
to be mine. I will never again have
to strain my wrist on a closed door
only to find the stout glass jar empty
but for its Nickelodeon tinted juice,
the last pickle no longer even a whisper,
long plucked from its amniotic cavity
by fingers careful and callous as though
culling a blood-ripe apple off
a neighbor’s tree in the quiet inkwell
of November’s night. I will buy
a house of my own and so in the tradition
of this nation-state, secure my goods
against falling prey to another’s moonlit
hungers. I was carried from the house
by the force of this thinking for more
than ten blocks, until I stood
at the apex of the old stone
bridge over the railroad tracks.
On top left horizon, tangerine light
was wafting off the tall blue house
on the bluff, the one you pointed to
last Sunday when we were out plucking
our favorite details from the endless
display of houses, lovely little details
from which we stitched nearly a whole
house for our future, the one you said
looked like it probably had nice door
knobs. I strained hard as I could
at its citrus eyes hoping to catch
a glimpse of the shape or color
of those knobs but saw only closed
doors, left untouched for how long,
no way to tell. I turned around, then,
to come home to you, thinking only
of the small of your hand, wrapped
snug and certain around some
unknowable fixture.
nanya jhingran is a poet, scholar & teacher from Lucknow, India currently living by the coastal margin of the Salish Sea, on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People (upon which the city of Seattle was built). They are a PhD Candidate in Literature and Culture and a Teaching Assistant in American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Their research explores diasporic poetics, sexual violence, woman of color feminisms, and feminist decoloniality in international law. When not reading & writing, they are most likely gathering friends around a campfire or a dinner table.