MaverickMagazine

Feature Poet 12: Maria Melendez



                How to be Catholic without being a virgin.  Cranberry juice for a bladder infection, but go to the clinic just in case.  Nothing like chlamydia to kill a romance.  This black eye’s the reason I called in sick

                Our Lady of Morning Breath

                blows into her hand and sniffs—

                odor of last night’s

                cigarettes, and the taste of sex

                she hasn’t had yet, mix

                with the pasty smell of

                old blood; her sensitive gums

                All ancient american
                calendars agree-

                this era is not infinite.
                One daykeeper

                says the next world
                will be water,

    ODA A DOÑA LANCHA

                With the patience of radishes
                            whose crisp spheres ripen underground,
                she moves through her house, out to her patio,
                            steps through the creek and moves to her fields—