Mariah Bosch
Mariah Bosch is a Chicana poet from Fresno, CA. She attends the MFA program there, where she works with Juan Felipe Herrera as a graduate fellow in his Laureate Lab Visual Wordist Studio. Her work can be found in Peach Magazine, The Acentos Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue.
American Sentences
My mother says to take another route: the trucks broke up the roadside.
I buy her red potatoes but don’t eat my own meal until seven.
Perfectly capable of cooking, I don't want to re-strength myself.
If I see my body shrunk, where did the rest of it disappear to?
I never write poems about my sister because we are the same.
She has a crescent moon scar on her hip I can feel when I picture.
I tended to her fast blood and tears when the waterspout indented.
I try to teach her about keeping herself intact when men want her.
In the car, I say it plainly: hold onto your lunar energy.
Tonight, a man asks me to come see him and I’m supposed to feel moved.
I can finally be direct: I rarely feel moved by men at night.
Can I ask you a personal question? is a question they can’t ask.
Do you want as long as I want? is a question that I ask myself.
Do not ask me a question that can’t anticipate its own answers.
I am always the speaker in my poetry, always the poem’s eye.
When I try to change my perspective, it comes out through my mother’s eyes.
I keep returning to the image of reaching into the wet soil.
In reality, my hands have rarely been buried in earthknowing.
If I tried it, I don’t know what would be waiting between particles.
I am constantly afraid of unlearning and unknowing my life.
I imagine my heart and memory board are cleared on my deathbed.
When the intangible is taken from me, I hope it looks like dirt.