Dinner

Vasantha Sambamurti

A raw half cup of rice

incubated for 23 minutes:

Its water rises in flaccid grey bubbles and

whispers secrets to itself –

probably about the stink I’m making.

At the stove I meet my maker:

Market Pantry vegetable medley: hard kernels of corn, carrot,

lima beans, peas and long green beans sliced lengthwise.

I steep them in a cold paprika soup,

watching them dye the mad, meditative red.

When the ice melts I pretend they are fresh.

I act like I am not just cooking for myself.

Setting a place for someone beside me,

making them believe I taste.

They incline their head when I scrape rice from the cooker,

recalling the sound of spider legs on the bathroom mirror:

a sharp, tinny shuffle.

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Vasantha Sambamurti is a poet, prose writer and MFA Fiction candidate at the University of Arkansas’ Program in Creative Writing and Translation. Their work can be read in Rigorous Magazine, Runestone, and No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant and First Generation American Poets, among others.

Vasantha also has a poem in Issue 5.

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