Maiya Belle Brock: 5 Poems
Lyricism
Through trial and error
we've come up with a system
for seeing each other.
It goes like this:
Sundays, my mornings
and your evenings.
My hair still wet from a shower
and yours tucked into a sleeping cap.
We know each other too well
to be shy of our imperfections.
We'll talk about how you're recovering
from pneumonia and I'm
counting down the days to graduation.
You'll tell me to talk about myself
so I'll tell you a story and you'll say
sometimes you forget how much of me
you don't know.
I'll read you an Ada Limón poem
that reminds me of you. You'll read me
one of yours. We'll say
we love each other through poetry
and the creases of our eyes, and then
we'll say it again, a promise
that no matter how far apart our lives take us,
there will always be time to say
I miss you.
Crevice
there was never any doubt / that we were ugly concrete sprinkled with pepper
born from the salt of the sea / we come from brine and fish-stink / a desert's inverse
gone from us are those days / given to us is lifestyle both sedentary and nomadic
we are not homeless but / it feels like we are without home
we family of sand dwellers wash our clothes for three dollars and twenty-five cents
sunday laundromat trips / someday laundromat trips will mean / walking down our own hallway
we are anthills across dirt like skin / bumps and scars in the path we paved ourselves
watching ants sneak between the cracks in the road / do they know
they make their home / where the weeds grow?
we made our home / in the cracks of santa fe
that crevice left unnoticed / lit by the finest slivers of fire
someday soon / was always in the back of my mind / someday soon / someday
paper mind and silicone lips / we watch our mouths with hungry eyes / or not at all
our situation / misunderstood / we don't understand each other / anymore
I found myself in the sandy wastes / and I promise / this is not a waste of your time
as pieces of our love drop away / we are waning / like a toenail moon / yellow with nostalgia
we discard this town like crumpled pages / phonetic world / do you sound the same
wrapped around a grieving tongue? / places we tore out of our dictionary / because we have forgotten
or because / we want to forget
She Left On My Birthday
Your departure
was not a surprise
it did not sneak up on me
I knew it
as surely as I know you
so why was it a whisper,
a quietus of us
I want to scream,
fight, yell, make noise
in grief of your absence
your warmth, your smell
everything, all of you
but I let you go quietly
I let you go quietly
Nothing Else You Could Do
For the 50% of marriages that end in divorce
blood orange moon bites
punctuation out of the sky
a punch of citrus cupped in a hand
lilac evening with the dust thrown
in your eyes and driving in the dark
like getting out of bed the night you argued
driving to watch ephemera
trusting the only light in the sky
the moon is an eye shut tight a peel
you the wielder of the spoon
scoop flesh from rind
in pockets that remind you of
being alone and void and stars
love is the space you left
between an explanation and
a promise there wasn't
anything else you could have said
was there something else you
should have said? blood orange
moon carried you away from
home your mirage of marriage
malfunctions bitter plum and citrus the moon
is not a fruit you would have
left eventually there was
nothing else you could do
Achilles
lying on my stomach, I can only breathe if I round my spine and lift my belly toward the hot white
lights. my freshly clipped nails have dirt under them already. I write desperate poetry over french lyrics
and cello. when I cry in the bathroom I curl up by the toilet, which is the only choice apart from sitting
in the sink. I am the bullet piercing my own eye. I cannot even watch as my own skin melts like wax.
Maiya Belle Brock is a queer and soft-spoken introvert who writes to elevate her voice and put her art into the world. You can find her work in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily and the Interlochen Review as well as the student anthologies Through Lines and Convergence 2024. Maiya holds the titles of 2025-26 Santa Fe Youth Poet Laureate and 2024-25 Poetry Slam Champion at the New Mexico School for the Arts. She has received honorable mentions in the Scholastic Writing Awards, the Aldo Leopold Essay Contest, and the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. Maiya is an avid reader and knitter who enjoys long, quiet walks and nerdy discussions.