BY PREETI VANGANI
Hiking up Hill Trail, a red-tailed hawk circles
high above us. Looking for something dead, B. says.
Eat my soul, I scream at the bird. There are several
ways to befriend the foreign: hug the oaks, thumb the poppy,
gush over the French broom, it's 6ft. invasive naughtiness.
When you tire of what’s above, look under, says our guide.
Clusters of chanterelle, milk-thistle bundles and the rough
memory of shaving my pubes last-minute in an office loo
for a San Franciscan date who said about the fake
succulents accenting his every surface, Isn't it better?
Who has time for water? Would you give up your citizenship
for this— fingernail moon, owl hoots, silhouettes of pine.
After each long glide, the hawk beats her wings restoring her flight.
No matter how I alight, my shadow is in my way.
Preeti Vangani grew up in Mumbai, India and is the author of Mother Tongue
Apologize (RLFPA Editions, 2019), selected as winner of the RL Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Threepenny Review, Gulf Coast, The Margins, among other journals, and has been supported by Ucross, Djerassi, Ragdale and California Center for Innovation. She is the recipient of the 2022 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. An alumni of the program, she teaches at the MFA program at University of San Francisco.