First Rice — Anika Tenneti
I)
In 2010 I’m six months old.
It is my अन्नप्राशन1, and
I am fed by Mother
and her mother and her mother and
every mother to have ever lent their withered hands,
saintly fingers posed in a gentle kiss, as if they
owed us their love.
She sits me in the eye of the room,
a forking road, and lays out
a book a dollar bill a pen a bangle.
I crawl, a feral bandit.
My eyes swill the lactescent luster of gold,
and I choose the bangle.
II)
In 1968 I’m reborn as a kerosene lamp.
Each evening, Grandmother parts through the
first rice crops of these hypnotic paddies
when I beckon her with a sky of dwindling saffron,
with sundown.
She must think I’m a दीपम्2
with how reverently she fattens my noxious flame.
As I dissolve into plumes, I take a final swig.
I imbibe the fuel within the fourteen-year old patriarch,
before she bullock-cart-rides for an hour next morning
to get the schooling she’s starved of here.
Riding past thatched roofs and marchers’ faded footsteps,
she hopes her daughter could have more,
that her daughter’s daughter could have even more,
that—
III)
I’m reborn as a poet.
I lodge in a dim, stale-aired chamber,
clinging to the smoke of पोङ्गल3:
I scorched it on my first day, when it failed to rise.
Enclosed by these ashen walls, I drink faraway stories:
anemic cordials for my emptying thorax. My vying,
dying field.
Bangle clinking to the beat of a pyrite heart,
fingers rattling, breaths convulsive,
the pen blots
like the घृतम्4 I spilled last दीपावली5.
I pause,
and then it floods, intoxicating the famished pages of this book.
Maybe by this outpour of accrued curse, I think to myself,
I am purged.
That is, until my pulse trickles into संसार6.
When will I learn?
_______________________
1 Annaprāśana (a word in Sanskrit) - a Hindu ceremony where infants are fed their first bite of rice, and then take part in a symbolic “choosing game”
2 Dīpam - an oil lamp lit during worship; represents prosperity, good fortune, and enlightenment
3 Pongal - a dish of rice and milk that is intentionally boiled over when moving in to a new home; represents abundance
4 Ghrutám - a clarified butter often used as fuel for oil lamps
5 Dīpāvali - a festival where oil lamps are lit to celebrate the victory of good over evil and virtue over ignorance
6 Samsāra - the cycle of rebirth based on actions in previous lives; can be escaped by enlightenment
Anika Tenneti is a poet based in California. She is greatly inspired by the idea of using writing, especially poetry, as a tool for expression and introspection. She has explored a vast array of themes in her works, some of which have appeared or are forthcoming in anthologies such as Cargoes, Sheepshead Review, and Just Poetry. When she is not writing, she enjoys learning about various scientific concepts and doing origami.