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By Anjali Pajjuri
Anjali is a third-year at UC Berkeley double majoring in English and Economics. Her favorite book is James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, and she plans on attending law school to study civil and human rights.
What really counted, the aliens handled burned their backs
under the mountain scooped labor as dirt
Stoned the wall, tongued the
curves. Gamed.
Fired.
Trained. Rested// cattle for
a switch on the dial.
Buried the Gods. My phone
was out before
the climb. I wore bad shoes, carved
fish from bones. Showed it in
how I stood: braid curving
from sun, leggings
dust-raw like tires. The guava wind
green and early. We bought juice for the
drive, ripped the sugar from
the stalk; Indians vanguard the never eaten. Stone
mountains, engineers, monsoon smoke. What’s
real and
what is. There were no aliens;
just monkeys thrusting up from holes,
ripping through rock like they couldn’t wait
be caught.
