Ananda Lima

Ananda Lima

LINE

I inherited from my mother

the knobbly joints and square ends

of my fingers

from my father, I got the habit of biting

my nails

their shortness, the frayed missing skin

had never bothered me

but now I have a son

and he has begun to bite too

In America, I learnt that one can snap

a rubber band against one’s wrist

each time one’s hand reaches up

towards the mouth

By the back of my hand

the rubber band disappears

into the color of my skin

but when I turn and face the inner side

it is a clear division

of my body

The first time I saw a cotton tree

I found it beautiful

the cotton so white in its brown cradle

so soft against the square tips of my fingers

I squeezed the dead flower around it

and felt joy

from hearing it crackle

As children, we had cups full of sugar

cane we chewed on it and spit

out the bagasse

Toothless men ran the knobbly stalks

through a machine, the juice

trickled into our glasses

and the flat piece that came out

on the other side

was put through it again

until everything was gone

the dry split stalk thrown into a pile

limp like blond hair

When I first arrived in America, I didn’t understand

what people meant when they said

with an American accent that they were

Irish or Italian or French

Now that I understand

I asked my mother for a family

tree

She said

she had never thought of such things

and she wouldn’t know much past

her grandmother’s first name

So what I have is my memory

of the faces of my relatives

and my own

When I first arrived in America, all I could see

was beauty

The snow fine like sugar

white like cotton

But now all of it

the beauty, the land, the tired metaphors

just make me sad

Before I left for America, I saw an individual

in the mirror

but today, I see my father, my mother, my brothers

my son

and a man missing skin

from tears on his back

and the man who did it

When I looked this morning,

I tugged on my rubber band

so hard

that it broke

—from Rattle #57, Fall 2017

__________

Ananda Lima: “I came to America on my own and for a predicted temporary time, as a graduate student in linguistics. I spent my first years here happily learning to turn sentences into increasingly more complex syntactic trees. I studied the trajectory of sounds from lungs, to throat, to tongue, to ear. I computed the lambda calculus of ‘longing.’ But by the time I ended my program, I was married to an American and thus here to stay. And I had also understood that I wanted a different type of relationship to language, which went beyond analyzing its mechanics. Today I use the language that brought me to this country to help me live in it. I write about being ‘other,’ about my evolving understanding of myself and my place in America, motherhood in immigration, how my son and I will always have different homes: ‘longing’ as more than a sequence of sounds, a two-place predicate, a verb with an indirect object.” (web)

Ananda Lima

WHEN THEY COME FOR US ON THE 7 TRAIN

Past the underground tracks, the railroad rises

our eyes adjust to the sun over Jackson Heights

at the platform, the doors slide open and the winter

comes in with the men in their dark uniforms

silence except for the “please

stand clear of the closing doors,” the weight

of their boots sways the car and I raise my hand

towards the pole, but one of the men grabs my

wrist and I feel the cold of his black gloves

against the grooves of my tendons, the cold

crosses my skin, the cold mixes with my blood,

the cold travels in my veins, to my fingertips

to my elbow and my other hand lets go

of my son before the cold reaches him

I say “I’m an American citizen”

the soft tissue in my mouth cracks

with frost, I say it louder

“I’m an American Citizen” and the frozen edges

of the words scratch as they move through my throat

I shout “I’m an American citizen” and reflected

on the man’s visor, I see my face

I think of my son if they take me

I think of my son if they don’t

as he watches me whisper

“I’m an American citizen”

while others are taken

by the men of ice.

—from Poets Respond
February 19, 2017

__________

Ananda Lima: “This poem was written as a reaction to news reports of ICE raids taking undocumented immigrants throughout the country, as well as warnings in social media of raids in Queens and cautioning people that the number 7 is no longer safe for undocumented people. As a human being, I am sickened by the hate and targeting of undocumented people. As an immigrant of color, I am also afraid for myself and my family and sometimes end up reminding myself that I am an American citizen to try and cope with my anxiety. Unfortunately, not only does that thought fail to fully reassure me of my safety, but it also makes me ashamed to try to calm myself with my privileges, while more vulnerable immigrants are being targeted. I fear the role of that type of thinking (where the different segments of the population, terrified for themselves, fail to protect those who are more vulnerable) has played and will play in dividing the people, making us weaker and strengthening our oppressors.” (website)

Rattle: Poetry

… without pretension since 1995.

January 1, 2018

February 19, 2017