Women in Marigold

Wilting coriander, etched steel plates, and long, dark hair spread on a beauty parlor floor-Mansi Dahal's remarkable collection is intimacy over a kitchen sink, sheer evidence of presence. At its center is the ache of dislocation and the desire for rootedness, captured in a single, impossible wish: "Imagine being able to live / in one place at one time." Interrogating what we inherit, Women in Marigold moves from Kathmandu to New York City, from Saeeda Bai to Sylvia Plath, confronting the tension between life as a daughter in Nepal and a future as an artist in America.

The fifty-one poems of Women in Marigold evoke both global and intimate concerns, as Dahal meditates on themes of displacement, feminine ambition, diverging identities, and the guilt of leaving loved ones behind.