This month’s poem is “Target Practice” by Maria Gray. Call 207-828-5607 through August 31 to hear Maria’s poem, read by the author.
Maria Gray is a poet from Portland, Oregon, in unconditional support of a liberated Palestine. An MFA candidate in creative writing at NYU, her work is forthcoming from or published by ONLY POEMS, Best New Poets, and others, and she has received honors and fellowships from organizations including poetry.onl, The Lumiere Review, The Adroit Journal, Bates College, and New York University. She is the managing editor of COUNTERCLOCK Journal and lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she helps run the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers’ National Student Poets Program.
Target Practice
We met, kettled, outside the Columbia gates.
Three suicides by train meant that everyone was late.
Lately a man on fire. A man on fire. A woman on fire.
Helicopters flying low over Rafah, then Morningside Heights.
Blood still warm on the pavement of the public university.
They lied to you about us. About all of it.
They don’t want us to know how much we can do for each other.
The only world that matters has long ended in my head.
I was so young when you were real. Prostrate to my body’s failures.
Handcuffed to the bed. Faceless men watched me and salivated.
Handless men touched me inside and out. For years I couldn’t say it.
Now the war is everywhere. Everybody in this city looks like you
until they turn around. Emergency exits barricaded. You were ahead
of the curve, as always. How old were you when you learned
most bodies donated to science are used for target practice?
Blown up, that’s what we get for being generous. At least
corneas are good for something. They spared me
your heart in a takeout box. Full moon in Pisces, full moon in pieces.
Sky blushing like a mortified teenager. Is it cowardly
inevitable or both. Letting the world happen to me like this.
The 2024 Poetry Hotline is a screenless exhibition available to anyone with access to a phone. The 2024 Poetry Hotline offers audiences a direct line to Maine-based and national poets and their visions for the future, and another medium to connect and inspire audiences with heartache, love, humor, rage, and regeneration.
