swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

retrograde
Sharanya Naik

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The Game

Once in a workshop about diversity issues
I played a game with about fifty others.
We stood in a line holding hands while
a person on the side called out directions:

take one step forward if you went to a private school
two steps back if your mother was sick when you were a child
take two steps forward if you can afford Starbucks whenever you want
two steps back if you worry about rent every month


The purpose was to comprehend inequalities.
The purpose was to keep hold of each other.
To learn how hard that was.

A white woman on my left
a black woman on my right
I knew how this game would reveal
and symbolize
and metaphor.
I whispered to my partners
I’m going to hold on no matter what.


The woman on my left dropped me after two turns
moving forward rapidly
The black woman and I hung on for a while
but my immigrant stories
my heathen beliefs
my dysfunctional parents quickly made it so
we were almost horizontal
holding on as she moved ahead
dark skin notwithstanding.

Fifteen years later
I remember her face
apologizing for dropping my hand.
I remember the back of the white woman’s head
confidently facing forward.

I cried in the wrap-up group
in front of all those strangers.
I cried for the hands that cannot hold
for my backward steps despite it all
for the blur of faces behind me
and the ones behind those
not even in this room.

I cry for the desperate apologies we offer each other
for the good intentions that are never enough
for the feel of fingers slipping through my grasp
and for my hand – empty.

Sad Haiku

Full moon and full moon
bookending a summer dream.
Nothing lasts. We know.

War

As Russians drive tanks into Kyiv
I remember March two-thousand and three
when Americans rolled into Baghdad.

No one imposed sanctions
or destroyed the dollar.
No one panicked that hell
had come to be.

This is not about countries
this one or that.
It is about men who run amok
fed by greed for something
no one dare name.

There are no countries
only men
(and women and children)
who can be rolled over by tanks
and men who do
the rolling over.

Dreading Hemlock

I don’t talk about god with my atheist friends.
about poverty with my rich friends.
about Palestine with Jewish friends.
about race with white friends.

I don’t talk about bisexuality with straight friends.
about men with lesbian friends.
about psychedelics with teacher friends.
about teaching with hallucinating friends.

(I don’t talk at all with my meditation friends.)

I don’t talk to Hindus about the Virgin Mother.
I try not to tell Catholics what I think of the Church.

Jacques-Louis David’s Socrates
pointing his index finger, says
Be one. Be Whole

braving cup and tears and inevitable doom.

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Sharanya Naik moved to the US from Bangalore, India in 1984. She is a writer of poetry and short fiction and has been working on a novel. She’s a practitioner of Holotropic Breathwork® and has been working in expanded states of consciousness since 1996, facilitating the Holotropic process for groups and individuals in many cities in the US and in India.  She has worked in schools for the last 33 years and has been  a student of Peruvian shamanism for 18 years.