“eyes” and “houses” by Ana Guadalupe, Translated from the Portuguese by Ananda Lima

By Ana Guadalupe and Ananda Lima

eyes

as a future blind person 
I prefer to engage 
with those who also have 
blindness ahead of them
 
not to catalog together 
the things we can still see 
that wouldn’t be a nice pastime 
but a public relations stunt
 
I refuse to resort to those tactics 
and accept the watercolor face 
the unknown eyelashes 
the alien shape

in exchange 
my watercolor face 
my unknown eyelashes 
my alien shape 

besides, we go out very little 
if we stare, it’s at the dust

houses

in a house behind on rent 
we talk about the hailstorm

in a slippery house 
the alarm clock rings earlier
 
from a house on fire 
maybe you wouldn’t leave in time 

in a house on a landslide 
we die thinking what a shame

in a small house 
tea towels don’t fit 

without an airy house 
you smell like a wet dog 

in a house without love 
everyone finds other plans 

in a hurried house 
there are things you leave behind 

in a house per year 
better not even open the boxes

Author Bio

Ana Guadalupe is a Brazilian poet currently based in São Paulo. She has published three poetry collections: Relógio de pulso (7Letras, 2011), Não conheço ninguém que não seja artista (Confeitaria, 2015), and Preocupações (Edições Macondo, 2019). Since 2006, her work has been featured in art projects, magazines, and anthologies in the US, England, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, and Chile. Her first poetry collection in English will be published by The Scrambler. She has also translated works by Sylvia Plath, Carmen Maria Machado, Kristen Roupenian, and Roxane Gay into Portuguese for major Brazilian publishing houses.

Translator Bio

Ananda Lima’s poetry collection Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) is the winner of the Hudson Prize. She is also the author of two poetry chapbooks, Amblyopia (Bull City Press, 2020) and Translation (Paper Nautilus, 2019); a fiction chapbook, Tropicália (Newfound, 2021); and a poetry and photography chapbook, Vigil (Get Fresh Books, forthcoming in 2021). Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, Poetry Northwest,Salamander, and elsewhere. She has been awarded the inaugural Work-In-Progress Fellowship by Latinx-in-Publishing, sponsored by Macmillan Publishers, for her fiction. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark.