Immigrant Speak

Aditi, 11th - San Ramon, CA
What’s in a name
besides history and turmeric powder,
bloodline and hibiscus roots,
and truth playing atop a mango bough?

Jhumpa is no Nilanjana,
but nicknames chime sweeter than cumin-spiced
syllables for strangers to cough
through (better for business too).

Yet when my father stumbles on
the sticky branches of homographs and idioms,
no one bends their trunks of pompous language
to make room for him to pass through.

So thank God my father slashed the mango pulp
of his surname
in half and grafted it to my newborn roots. Short
enough to escape crooked tongues, though

the yellow smear of a bitter-flavored accent lingers
to remind me: had I not been born in the land of the
free,
these lines would have rhymed enough,

and this name would be mine.