Poetry By Maria Hiers

       cattan2011 CC




my tried resurrection 
for Amber Heard

my past of eroded, bludgeon-eyed. my charges

of trophy wife and water works and lilith.

his lawyer hocks questions: how’d i rev
 
a combusted convertible? how’d i exit 

onto highway, headed to cut through desert dust?

my past of blood suds and crawling. his bullet 

had pierced my lung. taking turns, jury members

stick their fingers in my hole. my present 

of thomases. traffic cam footage rolls of when 

i materialized in an intersection. cars swerved me, 

piled-up as wreckage. his lawyer says i’m unholy, 

that i live only because the devil refused me. 

but beyond was scented of citrus, felt like 

dancing gin-dizzy. was my few days of untouched.

​



manatee county
For my mother

beach-side bar. wafting burger-scent, 

beef’s searing hiss. on the boardwalk, 

my flip-flops kicked off. me in a bikini, 

holding a margarita, salted rim. 

my mom reminds me 

to shuffle my feet, to discourage the stingrays. 

i didn’t swim, nervous of currents; saw him 

fishing, without much luck. nothing 

biting his worms. how i end up in his truck?
 
where he strips me of strings. asphalt

in my knees, zombie-ing towards trafficked street. 

i was naive, she says, 

cuffing her jeans to show me scar.

what a relief, that she can’t see my heart.





Since Jonatan Took the Bus to His Uncreation


Montana sheriff: “motel bathtub…shotgun…”.

Into windshield frost, you as what I scrape off.

Champagne and smoke I subsist on, since. Hear your call 

from the abyss, when I drive across a bridge. Except 

I hallucinate, being so starving. Looking at you 

causes lapse; I scissor your photographs. Like when I fainted, 

seeing your face on a friend’s fridge. Eating 

ruins the emptiness, which is all I have/you left.

​


​
Maria Hiers (she/her) is pursuing her MFA in poetry at the University of Houston. Her work appears in or is forthcoming in Harpur Palate, The Shore, and New Note Poetry.
​