{"id":239,"date":"2007-10-18T08:48:33","date_gmt":"2007-10-18T13:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/10\/18\/poem-after-challenging-jennifer-lee-to-a-fight-me-the-bully-version\/"},"modified":"2007-10-18T08:52:30","modified_gmt":"2007-10-18T13:52:30","slug":"poem-after-challenging-jennifer-lee-to-a-fight-me-the-bully-version","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/18\/poem-after-challenging-jennifer-lee-to-a-fight-me-the-bully-version\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: “After Challenging Jennifer Lee to a Fight” (me, the bully version?)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This poem, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil<\/a>, was sent to me in e-mail today by a friend<\/p>\n

After Challenging Jennifer Lee to a Fight<\/strong><\/p>\n

I hesitate, because what would my father say? My aunts in India
\nare swathed in sarees, glass bangles and crimson nails.
\nTheir perfect ropes of hair, oiled and glossy black, never
\nbetray them to the wind or the chase of a chicken<\/em><\/p>\n

in the courtyard. They’d watch my grandmother
\nshape bricks of dark halva, wrap each one
\nin tight plastic they’d chill for days.
\nAlways calm, serene.<\/em><\/p>\n

At least, that’s how my father
\ntells it, but I know when pressed,
\nmy aunts would have done the same thing.
\nJenny Lee called my younger sister<\/em><\/p>\n

Shrimp in front of the whole group of Bus Kids\u00e2\u20ac\u201d
\nno way I could let Jenny just swing her pink backpack
\nall the way home. Once the bus pulled away
\nfrom our stop on Landis Lane, I tapped her<\/em><\/p>\n

on the shoulder and, and-we were a mess
\nof ribbons and slaps. She was easy to scare
\nfrom my nail marks drawing tiny pinpricks
\nof blood on her arms, her puffy cheeks. I told her<\/em><\/p>\n

the red dots meant she had rabies, that
\nshe shouldn’t tell anyone because then she’d infect
\nthem and most of all, she better say sorry to my sister,
\nelse I’d push her face into the barrel cacti littering<\/em><\/p>\n

the sidewalks. My first rage, my first fire. Jenny
\nsniffled Sorry and I was relieved: I wasn’t sure
\nI could hit much more and my skinny legs
\nwere spent with dust and sweat. My sister<\/em><\/p>\n

and I walked home in silence. If we wore sarees,
\nall the yards and yards of shiny sateen would’ve
\nunwound from our tiny bodies, too light to drag
\nin the dust, too proud and taken with wind, like flags.<\/em><\/p>\n

(From At the Drive-In Volcano<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a9 Tupelo Press, Inc., 2007)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I was, I think, much nicer than this. Though I will say that in 2nd grade, one girl told the other girls on the playground that the eczema I had on my legs was some contagious horrible skin disease. So they would not play with me. And I cried.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This poem, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, was sent to me in e-mail today by a friend After Challenging Jennifer Lee to a Fight I hesitate, because what would my father say? My aunts in India are swathed in sarees, glass bangles and crimson nails. Their perfect ropes of hair, oiled and glossy black, never betray them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2pydS-3R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}