"St. Xavier’s Academy" & "Don’t Mess With Texas" by Sumit Parikh

ST. XAVIER’S ACADEMY

The nun’s wooden ruler

so big and white

against my scrawny brown hands

when my mind was

enjoying the sleepy sky

a free breeze ferried

by boat-shaped clouds

outside the school window

And the paddle

we got from Father Pinto

for not sitting still

was so giant

that it could have steered

that boat in the sky

He had weary eyes

All the brown bottoms

he must have had to look at

smiling smugly up at him

DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS

You shoulder

these two red bars,

head slumped.

Your future

plundered

vilified

because a

pale

seed

has

germinated

wild

in the lone-star’s property

a week

too many

Sumit Parikh has been published in Intima: A Journal of Narrative

Medicine. He has participated in a writing mentorship and workshops with

Brian Evans-Jones, who is the Poet Laureate of Hampshire, UK, and winner

of the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers. Sumit

is a pediatric neurologist and also graduated with honors in English

from Case Western Reserve University.