Beverly Acha, Frequencies and Waveforms IV, 2017. Oil monotype on Rives BFK, 22 x 30 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
My mother writes me
by Ananda Lima
and says
she never hit me
my son asks
me to write
about the prairie
I struggle
to see my child
face younger
than his
lighted by white tulip
sconces in the bathroom
mirror red
is uncommon in
the prairie
on my forearm
barely a heat
flowers
I wish lilac
wild blazing star
I love big
bluestem best
in the fall
color gone
on my forearm
nothing
swollen red
in the mirror
my eyes
Published February 7th, 2021
Ananda Lima’s poetry collection Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, forthcoming in 2021) won the 2020 Hudson Prize. She is also the author of the chapbooks Translation (Paper Nautilus, 2019, winner of the Vella Chapbook Prize), Amblyopia (Bull City Press - INCH Series, 2020), and Tropicália (Newfound, forthcoming in 2021, winner of the Newfound Prose Prize). Her work has appeared or is upcoming in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Sixth Finch, The Common, Poet Lore, Poetry Northwest, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark.
Beverly Acha is an artist from Miami, Florida. She received a BA in American Studies and Studio Art from Williams College, an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University School of Art, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Acha has exhibited in New York at Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, Underdonk, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Rubber Factory, Lighthouse Works, DC Moore Gallery, Smack Mellon, Collar Works, International Print Center of NY (IPCNY), El Museo del Barrio, La MaMa Galleria, and LeRoy Neiman Gallery, among others. She has also shown work across America, including Greater Reston Art Center in Virginia, Laundromat Art Space in Florida, Cloud Tree Studios & Gallery in Texas, Roswell Museum & Art Center in New Mexico, and Public Land in California. Acha’s artist residencies include the Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, CUE Art Foundation, The Lighthouse Works, Wassaic Project, and The RAiR Foundation. Currently based in Austin, Acha is Assistant Professor at the University of Texas. An excerpt from her upcoming book, Artists in the Studio: On Doubt, can be viewed online, and more of Acha’s work is available through her website.