Translation

By ANANDA LIMA

I wait and weigh the odds
of me being who feeds
and feeds and scrolls through
feeds feeding on grey

matter de eu ser um ser que come
supported by skeleton feeding on
feeds que se alimentam de massa
cinzenta made of carbon as all living

things sustidas por esqueletos
com suas espinhas vertebrais
feitas de carbono como todos os seres
vivos como a coluna central do lápis

the ribless spine of pencil
lead pure carbon
os miolos cinzentos dos lápis
or graphite and clay

carbono puro eu
ser que navega e se alimenta
de grafite e argila de chance
de espera de caminho

 

Ananda Lima’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, jubilat, Colorado ReviewRattleHayden’s Ferry ReviewHobart, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Translation won the Vella Chapbook Contest and will be published by Paper Nautilus in 2019. She has an MA in linguistics from UCLA and is a fiction MFA candidate at Rutgers University-Newark. Lima has taught at Montclair State University and UCLA and currently teaches undergraduate creative writing at Rutgers.

[Purchase Issue 17 here.]

Translation

Related Posts

Hall of Mirrors

November 2023 Poetry Feature: Virginia Konchan and Gabriel Spera

GABRIEL SPERA
Gracefully we hold each other / architects and optimists / always at arm’s length like / congenital dreamers / tango masters slinkily coiled / bright candles in a hall of mirrors / whatever I propose you propose / to conquer repeating and repeating / the opposite.

a golden field of wheat

Thresher Days

OSWALDO VARGAS
The wheat wants an apology, / for taking me this long / to show my wrists / to the thresher boy. // Finally a summer where he asks how my parents are / and my jaw is ready, / stretched open so he can hear about them, / easier. // I may look different after, / I will need a new name.

People gather in protest in front of a building; a man (center) holds up a red flag

Picket Line Baby

AIDEED MEDINA
White women give my father shaded looks./ Bringing babies to do their dirty work,/ mumbled in passing. // I am paid in jelly doughnuts / for my day on the boycott. // My dad leads my baby brother / to the front of the grocery store doors / for a meeting with the manager.