Lavinia Kumar

Not Voyaging to Brooklyn

–Re Brooklyn, Colm Tobin

I was not Ehlish, not a girl
with knit twinset, pearl necklace,
not old enough to dash away
from spiteful employer.

But, like her, I voyaged alone
over the Atlantic, I to a Brookline
doctor family, a five-dollar
seven-day a week mother’s-helper

happy with a green card, on the T
rattling along in darned knee socks,
earning a one-way trip to University
the rails fitting very well.

Lavinia Kumar’s books are The Skin and Under (Word Tech, 2015), and The Celtic Fisherman’s Wife: A Druid Life(2017).  Chapbooks are Let There be Color (Lives You Touch Publications, 2016), Rivers of Saris(Main Street Rag, 2013), and Beauty. Salon. Art. (Desert Willow Press, 2019).  Her poetry has appeared in US, Irish, & UK publications.  She is US immigrant from Ireland then England, her husband from India.  Website: laviniakumar.org