Selling Yourself Poem by Raj Arumugam

It's called selling yourself,
she says
to me, offering unsolicited advice. She's been here ten years
and I'm but a new migrant and worse, she thinks,
a quiet and unassuming one at that.



It's called selling yourself,
she says.
You got to be aggressive and assertive;
You got to be pushy.
Sell yourself.
I look at her
as she turns to her neighbour:
I see
she deals with cliches
and bankrupt phrases
and she herself stands
like an overused fourth exclamation mark.


Go to the alley, you bitch,
and sell yourself.


(from The Migrant - notes of a newcomer (February 1997- July 1998))