Where I Come From

My country is rough silk
My country is smooth spice
My country is black silver
My country is blue ice
My country is lotus temple
My country is golden mosque
My country is brick church
My country is glass synagogue
My country is tame elephant
My country is hungry tiger
My country is jumping monkey
My country is scuttling spider
My country is scented flower
My country is smelly dung
My country is ahimsa
My country is loaded gun

My country is
every manifestation
between a fiery red chili pepper
and your tongue
a peacock dancing against the setting sun

Shikha Malaviya

Shikha Malaviya considers herself a morpher, having been born in the U.K. and raised in the U.S. and India. She is founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Project, an initiative to document, preserve and promote the legacy of modern Indian poetry, and a co-founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective press. She organized ‘100 Thousand Poets for Change—Bangalore’ in 2012 and 2013; co-founded ‘Poetry in Public India,’ a movement to bring powerful verse by Indian women to public places across India; and gave a TEDx talk on ‘Poetry in Daily Life’ in Bangalore in 2013. Shikha’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She also founded Monsoon Magazine, the first South Asian literary magazine on the web. Shikha graduated from the University of Minnesota with degrees in creative writing and mass communications.

Note: This poem is a list poem of sorts. It has a rhyming lullaby quality to it, which heightens the juxtapositions.