Blue Selvage
Poetry
Tupelo Press, 2026
$19.95, 76 pages ISBN: 9781961209701
Preeti Parikh’s debut collection carries the kind of weight I have come to expect of the books that Tupelo Press picks to publish. As a migrant (a word with no single legal definition), I read Blue Selvage like an instruction manual and journal. It made me wish I’d known what to expect (because I didn’t), but also made me feel less alone in my observations of what it’s like to try to integrate (or otherwise) into the US.
Few of my actual worries before moving turned out to be real problems. Rather, the experience has been both isolating and expanding. Not all cultures see thriving in the same way, and so what we observe on the outside may not reflect the inside.
In this essay, I decided to interact with the poem As You Swathe Yourself, as a tribute to Parikh’s work. An immigrant, emigrant, or migrant writer is a mirror and a (mostly) silent observer. We can see what you may have become blind to. Parikh’s typographical experiments catch the nuances of her experience in a way that made me feel seen.
The subtitles I use are from the same poem, and I have chosen segments (reflected in italics) from the rest of the book to reflect the ways in which they mirror my own experience, especially where I thought I couldn’t have said it better than she did.
As You Swathe Yourself
Obsess
No matter how much you brought with you, you arrived with very little. You arrange and rearrange the parts of what you see now as making you. You look at yourself and try to imagine the way they must see you. Smaller, yet thicker, more intense than makes them comfortable.
Scrutinize
You twist and tweeze. Rearrange yourself into their fashion. Observe how close they sit to each other so you can accommodate their comfort. You choose to be bland so that you won’t stand out.
Watch
See how nothing makes you one of them? Why did you even think it would? Why would you want to be anything but yourself? You watch from a window, detached. See them come and go. The mundane becomes the plot.
Who have I become—expanded, uncontained?
Inspect
Get comfortable with your immediate surroundings by going out to document each leaf and how it turns. Touch stones and pebbles that no one has noticed in years. Run your fingers along the edges of things so that they, too, might feel observed. Become less invisible by going smaller and smaller in your observations. Watch yourself shrink.
Revisit
With too much on your mind, you turn to your few possessions. You don’t remember the person you were when you chose what to put in storage and what to bring. You don’t understand your choices anymore. But this is what you have now—a looted museum of a life. You try to tie strings, to unravel chains. You have a gift for this. So you were told.
Think
Your mind is your only true possession, but you feel that you may be losing this, too.
Percolate your thoughts. In sumptuous / expertly cooked dishes, eat your own self: / perfect ingredient
perfect meal.
boycott
You begin to set down rules for yourself. You think your choices might make a difference. Every now and then, you awaken in the middle of a store as though in a nightmare. The bright lights make you sick to the stomach. You look down at your cart and methodically replace all the items back on the shelf.
spin
When they touch your hair, wonder at your skin, speak of your accent as though it is a child in another room. They cut you with that from from only when they mean to. You are told to enjoy your status of exotic.
what we saw / we called flames, fire was the visible effect. / what we lived through was invisible. we burned
— a flameless fire. when you / deprive the fire of breath, it smothers / and dies out. when you smother, is it
simply breath that you deprive?
wear
The seasons are real here. You bring out last summer’s clothing, and it looks like someone else’s choices. Women look like they are walking on crane legs. You look at your own sway, wonder if you should square up.
Form is an eye. / a mouth that hisses: You observe much too much.
acquire
You collect items of disguise, as though you’re one purchase away from fitting in. You don’t want to be like everyone else, that’s not the problem. What you want is to stop feeling so ill at ease. You are extremely conscious of your place on the planet and still feel like you’re standing on your head.
learn
You start to understand that so many things you say have been misunderstood, yet nobody told you. Everybody has been humoring you. Is it your biggest nightmare or your second biggest nightmare? Your accent has given you some sort of protection you didn’t want or need. You work with words, and communication is your priority. You avalanche inside your own chest. It is stormy, then quiet. Something has died.
harvest
You live in a dream you constructed as protection. Nothing gets close enough to destroy you or give you a state of delirious joy. And so, when you reap results, you don’t recall the work you’ve done. You are not sure you deserve any praise. After all, you were asleep and are still asleep now. How could you have done anything deserving praise?
salt
You’re not sure of much, but you are sure of one thing. Salt does not taste the same. The meals you’ve been cooking for years fall short. Since your palate is constantly unsatisfied, you eat more and grow fat. You yearn for those other kinds of salt that you’ve known for 40 years. No sea keeps you buoyant. Your tears are the only saltwater that tastes the same.
fasting | | feasting | body
macerate
Every time you think you have settled (not a term you admire as such), you receive a reminder of your otherness. You have trimmed, eliminated, and rearranged your vocabulary by now. You have learned new meanings for feelings you have known forever. Your edges self-seal. Your edges don’t fray.
shibori–clamp
There’s something else. Something that perhaps made you leave your birth country. There is an anonymity, meaning space, meaning a fresh start. Maybe you don’t have to be clamped to your past here.
What is it I am cloaking?
dye
You start by dyeing your hair blue in your bathroom sink. The mess is worth the result. Your hair is mostly too dark to notice the new hue, but your white streak makes a small portion vibrant.
journey
Here, you start to understand that aging isn’t a simple upward slope. You experience the dragging of a body as it ages, then its revitalization. You build strength, try to silence and forget those who ever told you you were weak. The teacher who said you’ll never make it. The other who spoke of your monotonous voice. You braved the journey and now will brave digging your heels in.
witness
What do you have to show for yourself? The first to [
], the first to [ ]. Those accolades don’t take walks with you; they never accompany you to the cinema. Just think of those who are worse off and offer this little suffering up to them, that they may find a little peace in their dark night.
swathe
Wrap yourself in comforts. The kind you can buy when you have a little money after being micro-managed till the tears came. You speak very good English. Go for a walk in a hoodie, but try not to look like you’re up to no good. Stay on the path. Don’t upset the neighbors and their friends.
dip
Once you’ve embraced the fact that you are what you are, the next step is to help others embrace it too. There will always be the awkward moments; generalizations blunt as a letter opener slipping cold through your clothes. The little pinch that dislodges from the small moment and lets you carry it around all day. Make a black bean dip, buy a decent loaf of bread. Sprinkle it with the salt you brought with you from home. If you carry it well, everyone thinks it’s the best thing they’ve eaten all month.
i wanted / to see what they saw; their version-me. / i wanted to see; i wanted to be seen.
stamp
At border control, they ask whether you are carrying any pets in your suitcase. You think you’ve misheard, so you ask again. They say welcome back, stamp your passport.
crack
After the worst of the depression, you gather yourself and start to mend. Loneliness is a silent whip, only made clear when the walls rush in to crush you.
shed
[ T h e w a t e r s ] keep sieving through my pores.
sift
I was sifting flour to try to get bread to taste as I’ve grown up knowing it, when I learned that you no longer need to sift flour.
build
a bridge between who you were before you left and who you are now. Back home, things have progressed more slowly. Some of the people you loved have been stagnant, others have died, and others have become desperate shells of their former selves. The bridge is there, but no one can walk on it.
you might have met me somewhere I might be able to place you
if you tell me what face I wore then
withdraw
For years, you lived with one foot in each continent. No wonder you woke up exhausted, went to sleep anxious.
cocoon
You co-exist as the goo inside a cocoon, a caterpillar, and a butterfly, with only three days to live. There is beauty in this, too; it’s just that nobody warned you about states of matter.
lose
a small part of you every week in a warped chronology.
lose
the edge of a few words at a time.
lose
your [ ] then your [ ] and finally forget to [ ] for so long that you
lose it too.
lose
If only you did... If only you didn’t...
If only you were [ ]…
If only you weren’t [ ]…
If only you [ ]. If only you [ ] harder.