Preeti Vangani
Home Science
Mummy is helping me assemble a scrapbook
featuring two hundred women scientists.
Genius seems so damn achievable.
I haven’t yet aged into bullying her
for dropping out of college. That she was
made to drop. With every degree I land
I will go on to widen
my disdain for her simpleness.
How she butchers
the word penicillin.
Pastes on the fancy paper a headshot
of Madam Curie. I will go on to learn
that success for scientists and poets
is an epiphany and success for a pupil
is perfection. Aren’t I a perfect pupil? How I sicken
at the glue lines bleeding from under her work.
Preeti Vangani reads “Home Science”
Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet & writer based in San Francisco. She is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (2019) and Fifty Mothers, forthcoming from River River Books (Feb 2026). Her work has been published in AGNI, The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner among other places. She holds an MFA in Writing from University of San Francisco.