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India Currents gave me a voice in days I was very lost. Having my articles selected for publishing was very validating – Shailaja Dixit, Executive Director, Narika, Fremont

Eat in Peace…or in Pieces?

Pass the butter, hand the bread

Don’t be dramatic — nobody is dead

Carve the turkey, open the booze

But switch the channel if it’s news.

Sprinkle the pepper, pour the sauce 

Dried by the smoke of a burning cross

Just because the flames have been smothered for years

Does not mean we don’t feel the soot in our tears

A man on a pedestal flaunts his crown

Reduces an empire to a ghost town.

We apparently love him — it’s been reported

A toast to that, before we get deported

Close the curtains, God, what a racket

That officer’s gun is not in his jacket.

Just another man screaming for his life

Grab the remote, mute his strife

 So what if that burger is dipped in car grease?

Can’t someone let us just eat in peace?

When it’ll be us, just like everyone said,

Someone else shall pass the butter, hand the bread

I know that it’s difficult, that this will be hard

When the cranberries are sour and the turkey is charred

But to untangle the noose from this country of rope

Change the menu, bring out the hope


Kanchan Naik is a junior at The Quarry Lane School in Dublin and the Teen Poet Laureate for the City of Pleasanton. When she’s not doodling or writing poetry, she is most likely untangling her earphones or looking for something that happens to be — much like herself — lost.

Originally Published on November 25, 2019.