by Mary Block

Having coalesced around you, how I love you.
You are the one I breathe through the night for.
I take flesh in my mouth each day and chew
it into something that serves you, something more
than I can give you. I try to teach you what I know,
adopted child, about the past. The hunger and grief
of the bodies that taught you to survive in snow
you’ve never seen, to bare your teeth
at anyone getting too close to your kids
or your sweet, soft life. And all the times I endured
your laxatives and relaxers, I knew that you did
it to protect me, to make less of me to hate. Be sure
that I love you. And, of course, that I’ll outlive you.
And you haven’t asked, but of course, I forgive you.

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Mary Block lives and writes in her hometown of Miami, Florida. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mudfish, Best New Poets 2020, RHINO, Nimrod International Journal, and Sonora Review, among other publications. Her work can be found online at Rattle, SWWIM Every Day, Aquifer—The Florida Review Online, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of New York University's Creative Writing Program, a 2018 Best of the Net finalist, a 2012 finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a Pushcart Prize nominee.

by Mary Block

Any little bud of a baby knows
if it’s a girl or not. Forget me, Daisy.
My black-eyed baby, my pearl,
my dreamed-of daughter,
sweet incarnation of butter
and desert stars, blue asteroid
climbing a chocolate sky, go rise
in someone else’s east for a while.
Forgive me the crown, the chain.
Go be the sun for someone
who doesn’t need one.

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Mary Block lives and writes in her hometown of Miami, Florida. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets 2020, RHINO, Nimrod International Journal, and Sonora Review, among other publications. Her work can be found online at Rattle, SWWIM Every Day, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of New York University's Creative Writing Program, a 2018 Best of the Net finalist, a 2012 finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a Pushcart Prize nominee.

by Mary Block

A little bitter, like eating a grapefruit
with my grandfather,
with his tiny, toothy knife
designed specifically for the job.
A father of daughters,
he’d learned how to eat without wincing.
He knew how to leave for work
or whatever.
To leave the girls at home.

The boys catch sharks and barracuda
in a boat roaring back at the ocean
cracking against its rigid hull.
This city was built to defy the weather.
It was pulled from the sea
by boat builders in exile—
people raised with the knowledge
that pigeon and dove are two shades
of the same bird.

Between my dreams I tried to remember
the name for a lookout.
Nest came back to me first, then crow.
I blessed my boy with the flesh
of a sour fruit, with salt,
with the sign of the cross.
The school has hired a guard with a gun
but still.
I fed my boy my body
for so long.

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Mary Block is a Miami-born, Miami-based poet. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2020, RHINO, Sonora Review, and others. Her poems can be read online at SWWIM Every Day, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, and elsewhere. She is a Best of the Net finalist, A Ruth Lilly Fellowship finalist, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. More at www.maryblock.net

by Mary Block

I want some loneliness justified by my location. 

I want to purchase a piece of the earth. 

I want to be in on that giant joke. 

I want a fence around my family. 

I want the burden of aging infrastructure. 

The urge to complain about all the things 

I own. I want the place to look overgrown. 

Like, potted plants in the bathroom. 

Big buxom banana leaves. Ferns. 

I want an alarm. I want to love a place 

so much I install a siren. 

I want a gut renovation. 

Maintain some original details 

without all the darkness and wasted space. 

I want some land. I want the earth 

and the sky above it. 

I want the mineral rights, the air rights. 

I want the right to take legal action 

if someone encroaches on my boundaries. 

I want to be right when I say 

this whole damn thing is mine.

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Mary Block lives and writes in her hometown of Miami, Florida. Her poems have been featured in Nimrod Journal, Sonora Review, Rattle, and Conduit, among other publications. She is a graduate of New York University's Creative Writing Program, a 2012 finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a Pushcart Prize nominee.