Magical Realism in America

We made our childhood tree a kitchen 

and a real estate office, a karate dojo 

and a radio station. We rubbed wild chives 

into pine needles and baked them until they 

ran copper under the Pennsylvanian sun.

At night in the moonshine, my grandfather steers 

his balcony from India to America and crosses two oceans 

to descend to the land of this tree. He is tall, 

and his gait, slow and methodical, looks as if 

he's playing chess with air. He packs plastic cards 

in his pocket and a note from my grandmother 

to instruct me on my smart mouth. I offer him 

our onion pines, our scallion trees. He puts down 

a three of hearts and kisses Judith atop her head. 

I tell him all the bad things I will do 

when I am older and he sits, bony knees pointing, 

one east, one west. Remember the robin eggs, 

he asks and I am ashamed. I had taken them inside 

and tried to hatch them with a hair dryer.

Blue, spotted oval planets. I held that dryer like a gun.

And when the yolk slipped through the crack, 

I was devastated. Listen, I hate poems 

about birds and grandparents and childhood friends.

I hate poems about birds and grandparents 

and childhood friends almost as much 

as I hate poems that break the fourth wall 

like a cheeky high school play. It's just too easy.

But my grandfather's grave is in Goa and now Judith 

has two kids so they must be summoned 

somehow when I am terrible.

The three of us buried those sibling shells 

under our childhood tree, the canopy just long enough 

to cover my shame. No. The poem can't end here.

I'm sure he parted the branches and let in daylight.

Even sour light, he might say, is light.

-Megan Fernandes, ‘I Do Everything I’m Told’