my husband was afraid of the crash which pushed so many underwater I was afraid we were too in love too heavy with honey to extend a hand or flee ao fugir meu marido tinha medo da queda e muito acima dos rodapés nossas mãos se apoiando, empurrava tantos outros debaixo d’água um amor pesado com mel demais para oferecer meu medo de que a gente também at night I think if we might have to be two out of three, they must be the ones to run go without giving a look back I’m not a good martyr but in Fall I’m useless the least likely to help as the water rises conducting a fake melody with my cold wrinkled hands então lavo as mãos paro para olhar para as duas abertas boiando na superfície da água canoas falhas fugindo devagar a corrente de ainda longe da queda o raio do círculo centrado em mim estendendo the faint ripple around my body in water spreading invisible beyond the immediate radius around my hands meus pés melados stuck to the ground in the crash free themselves as the honey dissolves too tentativa tardia de correr sem precurssão dampened silent underwater I drip the memory of milk in the water watch the white beads swirl out extending fainter towards the walls and around the goods for the flea market floating dead just beyond the reach of my hands stuffed bird old button up shirt vintage chair two soggy boots and a speaker bursting with water I wash my hands keep on washing asking if we were to be none instead of two I should have begged them not to flee stay with me for the crash
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. Become a patron today.
[…] happy to have two of my poems, ‘Moving Sale’ and ‘Toast to America’ up at @raisingmothers […]