he shows me the difference between years
and ears in vain I say that we have two
words for it in my language (mine and his
too I correct myself ): this one word for
the outside bare skinned curled blind baby mouse
another for the inner part just ours
which nobody sees he says there are two
ways to say it in English too index
finger to a side door to his brain says
inner bends his ear as if to say see?
cartilage a great closing argument
I say yeah but that is not the same thing
and what I mean stumbling is it’s the same
word in English I say it slowly: year
Ananda Lima?s work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Rutgers University, Newark. Her poetry chapbook, Translation (Paper Nautilus, 2019), won the Vella Chapbook Contest.
