Shalini Rana is a poet from Virginia and an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Arkansas Program in Creative Writing and Translation. In 2021 she was awarded the James T. Whitehead Award for Poetry, judged by Kayleb Rae Candrilli. She is also the social media editor for The Arkansas International. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Rappahannock Review, wildness, Line Rider Press, Feels Blind Literary, and Anti-Heroin Chic. You can find her at shalinirana.com.

Love Kitchen

after dinner
we find ourselves in
the kitchen
a small earthen thing—
the black help
sit somewhere else
eating theirs.

hands clasped politely
we listen to the
white woman who dances
with dirty dishes.

this is her kitchen
her ‘love kitchen’
she calls it.

I wonder if she
made love here or
if she meant
the kitchen was a good place
to give advice
on love.

a scrubbed dish catches
the glint of her
sea-soaked eyes, heavy
with splintered desire
a girl would not know.

we wait for something
wise and wistful to come.

in a thick Haitian accent
she tell us:

never
overthink.

Routine (What the Neighbors Don’t See)

The girl goes to where
her mother told her to go
the first time
by the bookshelves
in the sunroom.
She rocks her belly
on a green pilates ball
meant for TV exercises
and focuses on the shifting
rug—dizzy white
patchwork.

The paramedics take
her brother who has
gone blue.
The ambulance wails
its circular ringing—
and once her mother
goes
and the front door
slams
she is always left with
a faint hum
in her seashell ear.