Sri Lankan Schoolroom
Sundaralingam, Pireeni
Poem Sri Lankan Schoolroom Traipsing across sports grounds picked clean by equator sun we visit my father's school, long-distance callers at the museum of memory. My father points out the...
...It is one day in a long, hot summer...
...Her new album, "Bridge Across the Blue," uses poetry and music to chart the blues stories of different immigrant communities in the U.S...
...Paper-dry voice crackling he dictates the rites of duty and decorum, the triumph of courtesy and reason over the casual accident of race...
...It is one day, seconds away from war...
...It is Jaffna, 1983...
...His teacher remains unchanged...
...Decades from now, this is all that I'll remember of that visit to that country: The sand dust in the air, the sun, bleaching dry the shutters, and the walls, empty of pictures, not even a map of the world...
...Her website is www.wordandviolin.com...
...My father points out the places where, giggling, his friends once sat, names that belong to old men in London and Toronto now, names that could barely fit behind these desks...
...Pireeni Sundaralingam Pireeni Sundaralingam was born in Sri Lanka and is a recipient of PEN USA's Rosenthal Fellowship...
Vol. 69 • February 2005 • No. 2
