By ANANDA LIMA
I close my right eye meu olho direito
and see everything tudo que
my mother my father meus pais no meu país
didn’t
know não sabiam
to do tudo
then que fazer?
e hoje, minha vista cansada
not a matter of laziness
the doctor says
it’s more mais mas
of a suppression
a lack falta
of focus foco
think of the right esquerda-
eye as a bully esquerda-
think of the left esquerda–direita
eye as too weak to fight – esquerda
think of the two eyes eu eu
unable to work right trabalho escrita
together and I eu
was left fui deixada
grown done criança crescida
with the plasticity
of a body that is still quieta no meu lugar
building
a give said dita
not to last dura
and I was left e eu fui embora
with the speckled super 8
the grainy film the faint dark
surface of an old mirror
Ananda Lima‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, jubilat, and elsewhere. She has an MA in linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in creative writing in fiction from Rutgers University–Newark. Her poetry micro-chapbook, Amblyopia, will be published by Bull City Press in winter 2020. Her poetry chapbook, Translation, won the 2018 Vella Chapbook prize. Her fiction chapbook, Tropicália, won the 2020 Newfound Prose Prize.
