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| Image / Irina Iriser |
GHAZAL FOR EARTH
We return our dead piously to earth.
Everyday we walk across crowded earth.
Clover, sun lily, cornflower, sweet pea:
The shouts of flowers are the shouts of earth.
In West Virginia, they bore into our Mother.
They undress her shamelessly, sacred earth.
Everyone mows their grass on Sunday.
We want to control what grows out of earth.
I'm tired, my body grows so heavy.
May I lay myself down on holy earth.
The worms are under our feet, tunneling.
They dine on and enrich Mother Earth.
We've done nothing right. We've broken your laws. Yet in the winter hour receive us, Earth!
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| Mary Ann Honaker |
Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023), and the forthcoming Night is Another Realm Altogether (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2026). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, DIAGRAM, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, Tuskegee Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.
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