Poetry. Asian American Studies. With telling detail and sharply ironic insights, these poems reveal the transitory immigrant sensibility of an Asian Indian woman living in the American southwest, immersed in the Spanish-speaking culture of the United States-Mexican border, and always aware of the exile of her Parsi antecedents from Persia to India 1200 years ago. Embodying the frustrations of immigration and assimilation, these poems are also ecriture feminine about women's issues, such as living with infertility and breast cancer. The harsh desert landscape and the inability of its creatures to survive are the naturalistic metaphors for the author's own struggles.