The Mind Is Its Own Place
Mary Block
We steal mangoes from the church
and say that we save them from rot,
from rats in the little chapel built
for poorly attended funerals.
Starting in June we can hear
the hurricanes being born
off the coast of Africa.
I say we, of course, meaning you,
meaning make this your problem too.
Meaning stay here.
I grew up here,
on the edge of annihilation,
east of a disaffected sun,
the cover of Time in ’81 relaying the details
of our municipal fall from grace—
the morgues at capacity,
skyscrapers made out of drugs.
Made to bend, like the trees, in the wind.
I know how to start over.
But these months are rough,
even on the natives,
and this one coming’s a classic Cape Verde,
gathering fury above the Antilles
and pivoting north, toward home.
A place built on mounds of ancient bones.
A place where ideas of order
get stripped down to their studs.
How well have I lashed us
to this ill-fated slip of the continent?
We keep our documents wrapped in plastic.
The names of our children are marked
with the seal of the state of the stateless,
the meagerly mourned. They were born
like we all are—slicked in our mothers,
moving by touch through the dark
and whatever is in the water.
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, 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.