Whistle
Purvi Shah | Poetry, swamp pink Prize
“I felt like I had no control of my immigration case, of my body, of my health, of my life, for that matter. And that’s why I spoke up. Because they were trying to mess with my body.” —Jaromy Floriano Navarro
of paper: anyone can sign
it, mark their own
perimeters into pores, extricate
a vine where the leaves twist
toward unforgiving ground.
*
A sardine
against a blue
whale. A once-jay
against a glass
window. Your face
against gurney. Your aspiration,
punctured. Your hope
to dodge villages of absence,
homes of violence, labor
without fruit – siphoned. A brown
leaf lurching through
river. Your foot against
erratic edge. And now you press
against the detention
center walls. You press
against your gut. This press
of hours. Every dearth
hurts.
Every border blooms.
*
They claim you have a cyst. The nurse
does not raise her eyes from the chart
and reports you need
from the walls rise up
in your throat: lost
in an unintentional game of hide &
seek, your compañeras
cannot find their uteruses – so you
ask the nurse for a pencil.
You are the paper for you have no other.
*
Did they consent? No one
can find the documentation.
*
The American consumer returns
the salted chips they did not like
to the grocery store. The bag, half-
eaten, rumpled, punched by rain
droplets. The cashier calls a manager to process
the return. There is no manager
at the detention center but you speak
up, tell the world you still have
your uterus, but barely. Tell the world
your sisters are suffering. Tell the world
you should watch what they are doing
to us. Tell the world they should pay – – They return
you to Mexico
like a bag
of chips.
*
It’s gutting when your countrymen
you down. I mean that Indian American
doctor who performed these procedures, who aided
and abetted generations
of erasures.
His collection of green, the papers
that permit immigrant presence.
His collection, evergreen. His collection,
transparent jars of filched stories.
*
Now your lips, a squabble
of jays, not menacing unwanted
hawk but clamoring to join
forgotten fray. You cross the lines
of your palms: you
want to behold
American seasons. You want to grip morning dew and feel
it form into frost on your tongue. You want to hum
lullabies, button your two children in Carolina
against your hips. On further deliberation, you want to stop
seasons from moving, cup brown leaves fallen
from trees so familiar with giving up their own
embellishments. You want to suture disappearances, feel
blood across your fingertips, rake a belonging
through leaking. You want
to unravel the start
of a chromosome, imagine
you could map attachment
into its own scientific
project. You want to discover a north full
of stars, glow that can guide
the monarchs, the blue
whales, your own body, your
body of bodies, your bodies
outside your body, home.
If only
you had paper to bear.
Purvi Shah seeds healing through anti-violence advocacy and creating art. She won a South Asian Social Service Excellence Award for her leadership fighting violence against women. During the 10th anniversary of 9/11, she directed Together We Are New York, a community-based poetry project amplifying Asian American voices.
Her book, Miracle Marks, investigates gender violence and sacred survivals. Her prize-winning debut, Terrain Tracks, plumbs migration and loss.
With Anjali Deshmukh, she creates interactive public art like Missed Fortunes, a community healing archive documenting pandemic rituals through poetry & visual art prints. Purvi relishes sparkly eyeshadow, raucous laughter, and seeking justice.