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2022 Academy of American Poets Prize

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tadasana

by Kalani Padilla

 

  immigrant girl mix-matches liquids in the pot, stirs, serves.            mistakes the mirin for the rice vinegar. wonders if the costco on the clark fork sells oxtail. Immigrant girl                                               			makes new ears for hearing lullabies, even those 						that are not sung between these mountains.2 immigrant girl answers “I don’t   know”  to questions about grandmother.1     gets older each time.   immigrant girl burrows    	a passage  from unhome to unhome everyday and on the way to school becomes herself       	a passage.                         wonders earnestly why the “freshest off the boat” would be the most undesirable.             		  	 smells her armpits shaves her  legs sharpens her tongue splits herself up Chicago style imagines her intended audience carefully on either side of a horizontal line.     immigrant scholar is taught “defense” as an interface of	 discourse between equals, then graduates immigrant scholar is accused (yes, mostly from within) of  forgetting something she was not taught.         immigrant child imagines wrapping Ilocano around  christmas gifts the way grandmother wraps her arm around her little sister’s arm.   			     2.     recalls being a child  in the Aloha Stadium parking lot during Swap Meet all alive alive alive with Ilocano. Comprehends   that Filipino  is not rhetoric.                                                                                                not  passage or place.  granddaughter is        			just you         standing there.



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