Poetry by Maya Maria

        Paul VanDerWerf CC



​
Animal Experiments    

              After Anja Konig 

Touch me softly, my womb
still weeps. My bones
bruise skin, heart like glacier
in my clotting river, every breath
an earthquake ripping 
into this irradiated carcass.

My core caves in
the absence of what almost
was, a silenced tick 
I still listen for. How
long does it take to heal
a woman? Perhaps a lifetime
and I am still dripping.

I am a husk on the floor,
seeds unsung and spent.
Does the lion ever
misplace the scent
of her cub? How long
does it take the hare to forget
once she has known the knife?

​



Consolation

A mother lets her child cry in the crib all night 
until it’s blue in the lips and wrinkled from strain, 
all because someone once said that suffering makes us strong.

She sits on the couch with a glass in one hand and a remote 
in the other–gorging on Tostitos and liquor–ignoring the new life 
in the next room braying for help.

This is how humans turn cold.

I put down my pinot and sneak off into the darkness of the nursery
packed full of spinning mobiles and stuffed toys and
freshly painted zoo animals that line every wall.

The baby doesn't care; wouldn't know the difference 
between a crib and a plush-lined box.

Tipsy, I’m scared to pick her up and roll her fragile head,
but I offer my finger. It’s all I have to give. 
She hushes at this small scrap of affection
and latches to my flesh, holds me 
gently in her gums.

​



Courthouse Blues

The past 

creeps up behind me on the cobble of the Concord courthouse
as I wait with the other defendants. 
I’m here for a dismissal, but everyone is guilty 
before innocent, and court makes us all feel like felons.

Is that mama crying on the pillars? a ten-year echo 
of her 42nd hearing against my father. 
I remember this version of her well. Older then, 
puffy eyelids and dirt-stained hands. 
Forty-two times she faced him (sometimes plaintiff, 
sometimes defendant) and that doesn’t account 
for the helpline hours, the mediations, the sleepless nights.
The lawyers that misplaced the lives they held
in their hands. The children treated like sequestered assets.

I wrench my neck around for a better look,
but my eyes are playing me, again.
It’s just a blonde woman waiting with her daughter 
and I think I see mama at every courthouse.

The memories

play in the aisles like little, malleable ghosts, 
and the room has a nip that I can’t jolt; 
the kind of chill you get when walking the ruins 
of abandoned buildings. 
Benches like church pews angle
toward a painting of a white-bearded judge 
echoing Jesus and his cross. 
How many lives 
have been sentenced, condemned in this room?
How many lives saved?

And there’s dad in his orange jumpsuit 
on the day of his arraignment, sulking 
in handcuffs, his feet rattling with each step. 
His face is a smudge to me now–most days 
not even my visions can remember what he looks like–
but I remember what he sounds like. 
Every line fashioned to reel pity from the strongest minds,
the same every time.

My name 

is summoned (my terrible, tainted name)
and I slump my way to the stand in a blazer like a straightjacket.
Evidence crinkles in my hands, paper proof so simple. 

That's me (or at least my copy) at the witness stand, 
a ripple of time mixed with a little madness.
I'm forty pounds heavier and blushing, bangs bobbied back,
as mama cries in front of the judge. 
She has no proof except for healed bruises 
and spackled holes in the walls.

Walking down the aisle, I remember this graveyard. 
I buried my childhood here, beneath the gavel 
of the judge who denied us safety. 


In one sentence, my case is dismissed 
but I have rooted to the stand and wrapped myself 
around the railing like Boston ivy on buildings that didn’t ask for it. 

The bailiff extends his hand and tells me where to go;
looks at me like this is my first time, 
like I’m a stray dog with no heading.
Maybe I am. 

The change in me quarrels.

​



Maya Maria has a bachelor’s in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. A piano teacher and nature lover, she writes poetry that explores the past and its influence on identity. Her poem “Legacy” is featured in Mass Poetry’s 2023 Intercollegiate Poetry Festival Chapbook where she represented UMass Lowell, and her other published works can be found in The Offering (2023) and Mulberry Literary (Spring 2025). She has also read twice for GBH’s Outspoken Saturdays with Amanda Shea at the Boston Public Library and is featured on GBH’s YouTube channel. Most recently, she placed third in the 2024 Beals Prize for Poetry competition. Currently, she is hard at work on a manuscript of poems.