To kick off the beginning of the symposium on 40 years of Lao journeys in America, some of the Lao diaspora attending submitted their work. Today, we’re serving you some poetry by writer and teacher, Kanya Lai, who will be joining other writers, artists and community builders in Minneapolis this weekend. Kanya Lai is an English teacher at Nashville School of the Arts, which is a fitting job for a person whose loves are the arts, education, and literature. She spends her summers traveling to exciting locales, where she usually volunteers in underprivileged schools and/or orphanages. Some of her favorite things are coffee, classical music, fashion, and yoga.   Kolkata Streets By Kanya Lai   The first moment of peace, before the sweat creeps onto my skin, is my daily search for a rickshaw at 6:30 am. The serenity ends there. I am quickly seduced by India’s chaos and noise. I welcome it, for it matched the state of my heart:  unsettled, grasping, and still desiring.   Just last night, I gawked at how this very …