Rapunzel

Ananda Lima
| poetry

 

My son asked me

how can she

keep a baby

from her parents

like that I

think about her

the witch as I cut off

most of my hair

in the mirror

midnight split

ends on marbled

formica

I cut off

my parents

in the pandemic

there’s only

so much

here too

harsh overhead

lighting but our children

plush

under weighted

blankets

and theirs thin

metallic designed

for emergency

the witch

can’t be

that cruel

he thought my

curls cover

the white

tiles

Ananda Lima is the author of Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021), and the chapbooks Translation (Paper Nautilus, 2019), Amblyopia (Bull City Press, 2020), and Tropicália (Newfound, 2021). Her work has appeared in APR, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere.

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