Sandra Lim

Sandra Lim was born in Seoul, Korea, and grew up in California. She earned a BA from Stanford University, a PhD from the University of California Berkeley, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her honors and awards include fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Getty Research Institute and a Pushcart Prize. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Poem

Whenever I feel loss or lack, I imagine  

The wind roaming outside of my childhood’s lair 

— as I am a child again, with my red knapsack  

bouncing lightly on my back —

Beckoning me to run to it, into its slurry white expanse . . .

And in my heart, I am already on my way

To some thrilling future

Which is not yet weak and diluted with a lonely pain.

There, I am someone who wishes to be

An exception and I am. A third and ringing note

Edges the banal alternatives of

Yes, and No. A lyric possibility rises

Everywhere and at once, a thousand roses—allusive, corrosive.

Think how much you must change. Even more than you dare.

— Sandra Lim