Toast to America | Ananda Lima
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.
__
Raising Mothers is a free online literary magazine for BIWOC and non-binary parents of color. As little as $1 a month goes a long way towards supporting our editorial staff and contributors while keeping us ad-free. Help us reach our first goal before June 21! Become a patron today.