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Jun 2020 · 312
Worth
Mahpiya Jun 2020
This country was built on broken backs
yet we still have to crawl on broken glass
Beg for mercy and thank you warmly
when you lift the boot from our throats
lest we come off as uncivilized--
your comfort is worth more than our lives
May 2020 · 104
Woman's Work
Mahpiya May 2020
This world has learned
******* a woman
How to starve her
work her
fail and burn her
This world has learned
that daughters die
slowly
rise again as living dead
souls stolen and sold
bought and bartered
then discarded
May 2020 · 101
Summer Harvest
Mahpiya May 2020
The night sweats away into the day, blackness running down
the west side of the sky.
We wake with the light and clothe in fabric
that sticks to damp skin and chafes still tender
arms and legs.
Westward, the night is dying, bathed in yellow heat.
Morning flushes warm and hazy, coltish on its legs.
Perspiration still clings to grass
and baptizes naked feet as we move past.
We are seeking the young hearts and lungs of the earth,
vibrant, blood-dark, and ready. Sharp in scent and
delicate to the tongue. Touch them.
Taste them.
A gentle killing; reverent caress,
preformed with crooked curtsies and twisting hands.
I'll carry you to my mouth, sweet one, small one.
Pitted, seeded, smooth and *****.
Forsake for me your manger-bed, a sweet cradle,
but I know sweeter.
My touch destroys, creates, transforms.
Quiet electricity, precious greasy energy.
Come apart beneath my teeth. Collapse. I worship you.
Come to me.
Come to me.
May 2020 · 106
The Return
Mahpiya May 2020
An iron sky
over the grave
Dead spirits
revived

Rolling cries
and rolling dark
Deafening is
the light
For the Wakiyan
Mahpiya May 2020
Barren as
asbestos-laden walls
The tear-drop seed of life
will never grace
my womb

I am a shrunken belly
emaciated gut
Tight around
the pit of yawning hunger
A yearning to create
A tugging desperate haunt
of my children
never born

I am
the bled-dry land
of a famine-swaddled west
Undeveloped and unknown
frost-preserved
I die

— The End —