New Orleans thunderstorm, after the Boston marathon

birds echo and a tentative sun
retreats to darkness, knowing
far away news about to flood
our transplant hearts.

days, it’s been rising
pushing
up

seeking the jagged cracks in
facades of cheery every-day.
SWAT teams lockdown
again,
“please…not…a muslim…brown…”
one brown man after another flashed across the screen
we prayed
fearing marines neighborhood shellings on the screen
fearing our brothers pushed in front of a New York subway
fearing fear bursting into lives
just yesterday, painstakingly, cleared of debris

Dhaka.
more than 70 workers. 84, more than hundreds
death tolls creep to the flood lines
while Sumi travels
telling of Tazreen

Sunil is 22,
fair but different enough
to be the fair but different suspect
whose mother, head covered, is on TV this morning
confirming difference.
last week it was a Bangladeshi
beat up in the Bronx
for the same thing.

geography doesn’t trick
the uses of brown skin

New Orleans bellows crashing
lakeside to river
my shotgun walls shake with rising anger
gut this house out

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Issue:Issue 44: Identity and the State (9/25/2014)

Author(s):Deepa Panchang

Deepa Panchang is a proud Southerner and resident of her adoptive city of New Orleans. Having spent several years engaged in international health & human rights work and constantly frustrated by the imperialist humanitarian complex, she is returning to school to pursue a nursing degree while organizing around grassroots health justice issues. She is a member of the Women's Health and Justice Initiative, a local feminist-of-color group affiliated with INCITE!. In the past she has organized with DC Desi Summer and is currently visioning with a budding collective of radical Desi women in the South.

Region:US, Bangladesh, North America, South Asia

Section:Poetry

Topic(s):Islam, Media, Militarism & War, Nationalism, Race

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