A Working Theory of Eyes
Open your eyes, my mother says
every holiday every year she gets older.
She edges her eyes with a pencil
the color of bluebirds, bluebirds sitting
on her eyelids the double lids I envy.
She envies the straightness of my black hair
my “china” lips but not my eyelids
hooded and curling my lashes under
and shorter, smudging a wraith a thief—
Purple, suggests my mother,
green because mistakes are easy
to hide and it makes your eyes pop
like a girl’s when people look
smudgeproof hoodproof squintproof
slantproof lifeproof youproof
Open your eyes, my mother said
every time she looked through
the camera as though it was okay
for my eyes to disappear into lines
only when she was not trying
to remember me in color.
Open your eyes, she said, though
my eyes were already open.
every holiday every year she gets older.
She edges her eyes with a pencil
the color of bluebirds, bluebirds sitting
on her eyelids the double lids I envy.
She envies the straightness of my black hair
my “china” lips but not my eyelids
hooded and curling my lashes under
and shorter, smudging a wraith a thief—
Purple, suggests my mother,
green because mistakes are easy
to hide and it makes your eyes pop
like a girl’s when people look
smudgeproof hoodproof squintproof
slantproof lifeproof youproof
Open your eyes, my mother said
every time she looked through
the camera as though it was okay
for my eyes to disappear into lines
only when she was not trying
to remember me in color.
Open your eyes, she said, though
my eyes were already open.
Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox (University of Pittsburgh, 2016), which won the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Award. She and E. J. Koh co-translated The Lightest Motorcycle in the World by Korean poet Yi Won (forthcoming Zephyr Press, 2021). She has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Knight Foundation, and the American Literary Translators Association, and her work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, The New York Times, Best Small Fictions, and more. She serves as a program coordinator for Miami Book Fair.
Art: Public Domain