Mary Ann Honaker
Trespassing
Tonight I stepped over low-slung
barbed wire because I wanted trees.
This land has a deed and the name
on that deed is not mine.
This is okay because I am white
*
lights pale as moon and bright
as sun produce no warmth.
Maybe they are the sun and moon
at once, and this is why
they never track across the silver sky
and never set. I sleep on ground
harder than any earth. It holds the cold
but not my elbows, shoulders, knees.
I wake bruised because I am brown
*
earth is mine, and I can sit beneath
the pine and count the dropped cones.
Who can say I cannot touch
this fallen tree, crumbled under moss?
I climb through the iron bars
of gates to stray through daisies
and fleabane. Today I found
a mountain laurel aflower
in the midst of nothing tended
to by a hand. I pulled a limb
close to my face to face the flower:
we are pink and white, pink and white
*
guards shove more children
into the already crowded cage.
There is no longer room to lie down.
The child who edges close to me
has dried snot on her upper lip.
One boy likes to loop his fingers
through the fencing’s lattice.
“I want mama,” he repeats.
Some guards swat his fingers with batons
but he is quick as a lizard, drawing back.
If asked Mama’s name, he says “Mama” again,
confused. “Mama,” he insists. The guards laugh
because no-name Mama is brown
*
bark crumbles from the leafless tree.
I am the body of the earth, I am a bee
in clover I step over, I am the deer
who shimmies her head, all
walk-like-an-Egyptian, and I
shimmy mine back. She huffs
and high-steps into the black woods
waving the banner of her tail, white
*
as the flour tortillas I dream of.
My belly is so angry even my throat
is filled with bees. Sometimes I cry
a little but not much because my body
is as dry as a little brown leaf.
A guard batons the ringing fencing
as he sings, “Shut up, Maria,”
even though Maria is not my name.
*
I am of the earth and the earth is of me.
When I climb the gate the neighbors
look away because I am white.
When I cross the river on Papa’s back
the river is mine and the earth on each
side. I am of the white man
who takes me from Papa’s arms:
we both cry. I am of the countless eyes
that look away because I am brown.
I walk to and fro over the deeded earth,
the lawed and coded earth, because
I am of the earth and it is mine.
Mary Ann Honaker is the author of It Will Happen Like This (YesNo Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in 2 Bridges, Drunk Monkeys, Euphony, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Off the Coast, Van Gogh’s Ear, and elsewhere. Honaker holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.