I’m not Muslim and I’m the right kind of brown and I called my family in Mysore today as I do most Sundays because #daughterofanimmigrant and they asked, as they often do, “when are you coming to visit?” And I said, “now it is so hard” and I could hear the nods in a short silence seven thousand miles long. My uncles and aunt have a long running card game, and I heard the updated tally — my aunt is winning — and I said, don’t cheat, the vocabulary word for cheat — mosa — a pearl, passed to me from my great-great aunt Thayi who did enthusiastically, unapologetically cheat
[and in her example I am redacting the rest of this poem because I have submitted it! cheating FTW!] but here is the end:
And we, we are the lucky ones, no one is facing deportation and my difficulties are quotidian, time and money and the chances are high this sort of thing would not happen to me, a Hindu, a Jew, a poet — because the security state does not seem to read poetry even as they tap our phones and check our Facebook posts.
Dania Rajendra 