HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU DEAR AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL............. Date of Birth: 23-Dec-1974 Place of Birth: Chicago, , United States of America Profession: Writer Nationality: United States of America, India Nezhukumatathil received her B.A. and M.F.A. from Ohio State University. She is an associate professor of English at the State University of New York - Fredonia.[1] She has also taught at the Kundiman retreat for Asian-American writers.[2] She is author of three poetry collections. Her first collection, Miracle Fruit, won the 2003 Tupelo Press Prize and the Global Filipino Literary Award in Poetry, was named the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year in Poetry, and was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award and the Glasgow Prize. Her second, At the Drive-In Volcano, won the 2007 Balcones Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection is Lucky Fish (2011), which won the 2011 Eric Hoffer Award for Books grand prize. Among Nezhukumatathils awards are a 2009 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in poetry,[3] and a 2009 Pushcart Prize for the poem Love in the Orangery. Her poems and essays have appeared in New Voices: Contemporary Poetry from the United States,[4] American Poetry Review, FIELD, Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, Mid-American Review, and Tin House.[5] She is married to fellow SUNY-Fredonia professor Dustin Parsons. They live in upstate New York with their two sons. FAMOUS POEMS..... 1) After the Auction, I Bid You Good-Bye BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL You elbow me with your corduroy jacket when a box chock-full of antique marbles comes up. I can’t hear your whispers above the auctioneer’s racket. The clipped speech of the auctioneer cracked me up when you impersonated him in bed. Like a wild, thick mop I soak up every copper smell from your corduroy jacket. In two days, I will drive you to the airport, packed with other couples pressed tightly at the top of the escalator. Lines sear my cheek from your corduroy jacket when we hug—then a quick kiss good-bye tacked on at the end. I’ll finger the rim on the paper coffee cup you leave in my car. When I hear your name I can’t forget how your long torso pressed against my bare back, bluish in this early light. Your fingers shot into me, popped my spine into a wicked arch. There is no lack of how it haunts me still—what I bid—lost, sacked and wrapped for other girls. I should have looked up to see who else was bidding, but I studied the folds in your jacket. My limit is spent, loud and certain as the auctioneer’s racket. 2)Are All the Break-Ups in Your Poems Real? BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick, the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse— then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance, bit, and bite. Wait. I have made them up—all of them— and when I say I am married, it means I married all of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves. Can you imagine the number of bouquets, how many slices of cake? Even now, my husbands plan a great meal for us—one chops up some parsley, one stirs a bubbling pot on the stove. One changes the baby, and one sleeps in a fat chair. One flips through the newspaper, another whistles while he shaves in the shower, and every single one of them wonders what time I am coming home. 3) Dear Amy Nehzooukammyatootill, BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL (a found poem, composed entirely of e-mails from various high school students) If I were to ask you a question about your book and sum it up into one word it would be, Why? I think I like Walt Whitman better than you. I just dont get literature, but for a fast hour and a half read, your book takes the cake. I like how you organized the lines in that one poem to represent a growing twisting bonsai tree. Are you going to get a rude reaction when you meet that one guy in that one poem? I guess you never know. You are very young to be a poet. I also like how your poems take up an entire page (it makes our reading assignment go faster). In class we spend so much time dissecting your poems and then deeply analyzing them. I think I like Walt Whitman better than you, but don’t take offense—you are very good too! You are young, You are young and pure and really just want to have a good time. Thank you we have taken a debate and you are a far better poet than Walt Whitman. And I loved how your poems were easy to read and understand. Hello my name is Alicia. We read you book and I just loved it. We also read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. There was no competition there. I liked your book a whole lot better. It was an easy read. But poetry is not my favorite type of literature. Sometimes I am offered drinks and guys try to talk to me but I too just brush it off and keep dancing. Every once and a while the creepy mean guys try to offer you things and then they say something. What would you do? Lastly, I was wondering if you ever wrote a poem that really didn’t have a deeper meaning but everyone still tried to give it one anyways? Walt Whitman is better than you. 4) First Anniversary, With Monkeys BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL Periyar Nature Preserve There is no crumbly frozen cake to thaw. Today, we are in the jungle. I mean mosquito. I mean tigers and elephants sludging their way to the lake for a drink and Don’t make sudden moves or snakes startled from an afternoon nap will greet you fang first. I think we are lost. Too hot for any cold confection to survive. Even my tube of sunblock is as warm as a baby’s bottle. You get to those places I can’t reach, those places I dared not even whisper before I walked down the aisle in white. You never worried if our families would clash, if they would clang like the clutch of pale monkeys clanging the thin branches of the treetrops, begging for our trail mix. You never worried about my relatives staring at your pale, muscled calves— things not usually seen outside of the bedroom. You wore hiking shorts anyway. And still, they lavished ladle-fuls of food on your plate. I think we are lost. My eyes are dark and wet as that wild deer that walked right past us, a little off the trail. I think we are lost, but for once I dont mind. Eventually you turn us back to a place not on any map, but I know I can trace it back with my finger if we ever need it again. We made it one year without a compass and we’re not about to start now. 5) Red Ghazal BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL I’ve noticed after a few sips of tea, the tip of her tongue, thin and red with heat, quickens when she describes her cuts and bruises—deep violets and red. The little girl I baby-sit, hair orange and wild, sits splayed and upside down on a couch, insists her giant book of dinosaurs is the only one she’ll ever read. The night before I left him, I could not sleep, my eyes fixed on the freckles of his shoulder, the glow of the clock, my chest heavy with dread. Scientists say they’ll force a rabbit to a bird, a jellyfish with a snake, even though the pairs clearly do not mix. Some things are not meant to be bred. I almost forgot the weight of a man sitting beside me in bed sheets crumpled around our waists, both of us with magazines, laughing at the thing he just read. He was so charming—pointed out planets, ghost galaxies, an ellipsis of ants on the wall. And when he kissed me goodnight, my neck reddened. I’m terrible at cards. Friends huddle in for Euchre, Hearts—beg me to play with them. When it’s obvious I can clearly win with a black card, I select a red. I throw away my half-finished letters to him in my tiny pink wastebasket, but my aim is no good. The floor is scattered with fire hazards, declarations unread. THE END....
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 08:38:09 +0000