Amit Majmudar

Born to Indian immigrants, Amit Majmudar is an American novelist and poet raised in Cleveland, Ohio. His family lived in India for part of his childhood before returning to the United States, and his experiences balancing his hybrid identity as the Indian child of a secularized Hindu family and an American boy from the Midwest are core to much of his writing. His poetry regularly draws from religion (Hinduism as well as Christianity and Islam) and cultural tensions in the United States, but he often argues in favor of the advantages, strength, and creativity that stem from diversity and varied experiences. His ten celebrated novels and poetry collections also take crucial inspiration from history and philosophy and are stylistically precise and methodical, fitting with his full-time career as a diagnostic radiologist who specializes in nuclear medicine. He lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and three children.

Photo Credit: Ami B. Majmudar

T.S.A.

Off with the wristwatch, the Reeboks, the belt.

My laptop's in a bin.

I dig out the keys from my jeans and do

my best Midwestern grin.

At O'Hare, at Atlanta, at Dallas/Fort Worth,

it happens every trip,

at LaGuardia, Logan, and Washington Dulles,

the customary strip

is never enough for a young brown male

whose name comes up at random.

Lest the randomness of it be doubted, observe

how Myrtle's searched in tandem,

how Doris's six-pack of Boost has been seized

and Ethel gets the wand.

How polite of the screeners to sham paranoia

when what they really want

is to pick out the swarthiest, scruffiest of us

and pat us top to toe,

my fellow Ahmeds and my alien Alis,

Mohammed alias Mo—

my buddies from med school, my doubles partners,

my dark unshaven brothers

whose names overlap with the crazies and God fiends,

ourselves the goateed other.

Published:

2016

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Poetic Form

Racial Injustice