Hay Rolls
Sadieville, Kentucky, 2022
I dreamed them once
dozens dense and quiet
sweet-lined down the field’s winding bed
faces cartwheeling my memory
a crowded reliquary
perhaps proof I’d seen it then
been there when one yell blessed another
I tried to climb legs collapsing
caught by the tight rounded V in between
I fell
they grew mammoth
dried bits thick as my chest
when I arrived back home they’d been stacked
out of sight probably wrapped in that plastic
sold bulk in surgical colors
now as I approach the meadow is full
of pricking echoes
I imagine days of cutting and baling
bundles squatting fatly in early mists
rising with the purple dusk immense
dry spirals alight with gold
space between a brittle petroglyph
lifted in my absence
by sunburned hands
by the mouths of horses
Rockbridge County Wildcats
west virginia late morning
stuffy light
legs restless
it was us
and two blue buses rolling nose to tail
a pair of rough treaders cresting hills
then rushing swift as grey sleet down, down
which sport those boys played I couldn’t guess
a kid glances over and now I’m thinking what if
we were friendly across the freeway
what if I could tell you how I’m conjuring
the scraps of me, then
you placing me in retrograde
beside stamped habits
jests faltering towards
the edge of yes
I liked how my desire flashed on others
your hands my hands on their shoulders
their laugh my laugh, oh
how you were clever
I held a touch
for each one
first on the forehead perhaps a spotted cheek
the elbow’s fulcrum
but let’s talk your game, wildcat
let’s tally up those clean looks
the dirty ones that missed your beloved
from the darkness of an empty bed
streaked with pain and
your secret wholeness
look across the pavement
and read my lips
for I have lived you again and again
each minute
stifling the poetry
of my sex–
a fast-running
house of power
My name is Maya (they/she) and I grew up in Sadieville, Kentucky. I am a junior at Smith College majoring in French and Comparative Literature. I almost never sit down to write ; events, objects, and people inspire my poems in the moment, wherever I might be. Thank you for your consideration!
Pegasus 