Time’s hard
I go back 
to the toaster
my bread’s still   too white
I come back still   too I 
don’t want it like that
soggy, white, come   back
It’s burnt

Open the door 
only for
a second or
whatever 
just 
enough
for me     to
get out
    and in
and stay
here a place
I fooled myself
into calling
home a place
here for only
a second   I 

                open&               
                gentle&
                polite&
                harmless.

and like 
a big bang
    a      billion
                mosquitos 
            come           in           and
Bite me

Like that     
I overstayed
here it went by
so quickly 
over
stayed vis-a-vis 
a person
in the mirror her
face soggy and toast
hard              to tell 
the difference
really from the day 
before I 
here for
so long
so polite
the whole
time
some see
the face 
of Jesus
on their
bread

Time’s hard, I had
a baby and everything
here and he walks and
talks 
American
come back he’s grown
     and gone                    someplace
here    or         who knows where
        we’ll all be               by then
times           pass
        ports                      flint                                sparks 
                    over
                                   -stayed
                                                           a fool
went by
                so quickly

Ananda Lima’s work has appeared or is upcoming in The American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poets’ Poets.org, The Kenyon Review Online, Colorado Review, The Acentos Review, Rattle, The Common and elsewhere. Her chapbook Translation (Paper Nautilus, 2019) won the 2018 Vella Chapbook Contest. She served as the poetry judge for the 2019 AWP Kurt Brown Prize. She has an MA in Linguistics (UCLA) and an MFA in Fiction (Rutgers-Newark) and has taught at UCLA, Montclair State University and Rutgers University. She was a mentor in the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Immigrant Artist Program – Newark and the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program.

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