field mice run around inside me and all i want to do is sleep by Mariah Freire
how many ghosts
inhabit this land? too
many to
tell me about the neck crushed, the
shot, the dream drowned, the sinewy
tendon that beats
in
two
while
the black behind my eyelids
is a loud curse and every night
i pray for silence, send
messages to the stars when
i cease to exist, while
the rotting world
slips
through my fingers
the fire rages and i
blow on a few
ashes
just to watch the flames flare
i want to know what it means
to have a body,
not fear an inescapable death,
home a heart never meant for
this world
in the darkness of the fields
inside me,
cavernous and tempting
i wait,
for the walls to crumble
i prepare for war
october 26th, 2020Mariah Freire is an Afro-Latinx poet born and raised in New York. She holds a degree in Communications from Boston University and lives in Brooklyn with two crazy cats. She writes mostly not about race (but sometimes about race). Her work has been published in Girls Get Busy Zine and is forthcoming in Poetry Under Isolation (Alternative Field, 2020), Cosmonauts Avenue and others.