Poetry by Mya Alexice

frontier

me, stochastic¹ and riverine—

a watershed body. beavers build

temporary dams inside my large

intestine. I am no agent. I am

only acted upon. sometimes ecologists

pry apart my arteries with latex hands,

inspect my perpetual motion blood

machine. inside brackish waters new

species bloom—a microbiome of

fauna in my blossoming gut. I am

a transgression in the shape of an

ongoing flood. my river mouth does

not ask for forgiveness when the levees

break.

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¹Phenomena that cannot be predicted by existing knowledge.

biracial complex

it is i, gringa / backra /

colonizer / tragic mulatto

come to reap rewards of century struggle.

this high yellow bitch wishes hoop earrings

or 3c curls were enough to cancel out cream

skin. basic algebra, solve for x. mixed

person wants someone to one day call

them with universal code. like my nigga

did you see what that white boy did last

night? like us and them. mixed boy

is like, there are bigger problems than

this, deserving bigger poems. mixed boy

doesn’t want to take up an already small

stage with mixed boy issues. remember

when we were kids and played spades

in the kitchen while keeping one eye on

the door? when our hair was braided by

spider-weaving fingers, pulling at our tender

scalps. my skin lightened as i grew older

and spent more of my hours inside, away

from the prying sun. now I wonder if you

would call me sister, or brother, or not even

call to me at all. cast cowrie shells where

my eyes should be, a deal with the

devil. Eshu, bend me like a

string upon a bow. look how dark

I get when I bruise.

Ribbon

the entire time I unfold I can’t help but

think of the wilting that will come

later. fanning outward, facing an invisible

sun,

I beckon for a witness.

I’ve heard there’s a chance I’ll reappear next season

but what is a probability if not a halfway lie?

you’ll say the poor thing couldn’t even bear fruit.

you’ll pull my postmortem petals and ask who loved and who not.

my flowers ribbon into full wingspans while the gods shake their heads. this overgrown shell

begins to eat itself head to tail. my vessel was not meant to keep so tight. I understand the price

and the circle but it still hurts. still cuts in thousands.

so cue the time lapse study

of the night-blooming cereus,

if you must.

but watch close—did you see me, for just an instant, birthing myself out of nothing,

blooming then dying so soon but never not not?

I’ll swear, I took hold.

and I, too, was beheld.

Mya is a current MFA student at Rutgers University-Newark. Their poems can be found in several publications such as Door = Jar, The Legendary, 4x4, Echoes, and more. They were also the winner of the 2018 Columbia Quarto Chapbook Contest. In their work, they're eager to confront historical legacies and shifting definitions of what humans are when they lose their opposition to nature.