m. Bennett
i am reborn underwater & named by each moth
floating around my head//if you squint
just right the ground cover blurs into real
appalachian spite//if you sing a song
to the mud daubers they stay coiled
up in their porch swing springs, allowing you
a pass one time & maybe another//but these hills gamble stung or not & try to rename a queer a lesbian a tomboy
a lady//i tell everyone i am not a lady//i unname myself
& listen to the water-logged leaves
when tornado-caught they flurry//when sirens fire
off names of names of names so far removed
that beloved no longer means beloved
just another mary wallowing
in remembered sand//here mary twists
rootbound//mary drops her foolish guise//
covers her vagina with poison ivy & delights
in the anti-piety of making her own row of potatoes//
of sowing in the fall until drowned
in her own watering she shirks
garden gnomes & capitalism & even me.
***
m. Bennett lives in Tucson, Arizona but comes from a village in Ohio called Jewett. They miss cows daily, love vintage costume earrings, & spend their free time painting eyes in many forms. They hope that their great-grandma’s ghost will appear to them, but they’re still waiting.