Amblyopia

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.

[Purchase Issue 20 here.]