Learning to See in Another Language

Because the snapper
before us don’t have their eyes
open, nor the candles

that were bees’ bellies
or whatever, and no
plate is a landmine, even

metaphorically, and I know
what counts is not what
but where, right, and we

agree resurrection is a myth
and thus not false,
and hellfire, a myth

and not untrue. And how
can you eat, how can you eat,
says just too loud

a man at another table,
knowing we know
people on the kill

list? But that doesn’t
really happen, does it,
as the interpreter tells us

after we finish: That was not
what you saw. That
was not what you saw at all.

—

Andres Rojas holds an MFA from the University of Florida and is the author of the audio chapbook The Season of the Dead (EAT Poems, 2016). His poems have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in, among others, Best New Poets 2017, AGNI, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, The Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, New England Review, New American Writing, and Notre Dame Review.

—

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo