Maia Brown-Jackson
After an incredibly practical literature degree from the University of Chicago, award-winning, pushcart-nominated Maia Brown-Jackson then braved the myriad esoteric jobs that inevitably followed, ultimately straying to Iraq to volunteer with survivors of ISIS genocide. Inspired with a new focus, she caffeinated herself through a graduate degree in terrorism and human rights and now investigates fraud, waste, and abuse of humanitarian aid in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Also, she writes.
Bruised knuckles, bruised lips
Mouth is red from wine and fingers white with ash,
lips sticky with nectar but a smile dripping blood.
I think—
I think I am at war with myself.
I think my shadow is the wreckage
left behind after a natural disaster.
My assembly was messy,
ligaments and tendons askew,
but you can recognize a skeleton
and lungs
and a heart
even if they’re made of comets and hummingbird wings
because the flesh and muscle and veins and arteries all rotted away
and I’ve tried to make do,
singing life back into my rusted gears.
I’m more bruised knuckles than bruised lips,
and my eyes don’t know how to cry.
I’m a collection of scars,
and each step I take shakes my frame like an earthquake.
Maybe I’m a harbinger of doom.
Maybe I’m a canary in a coal mine.
So if I reek of ozone rather than petrichor,
the burnt chlorine of electricity rather than the green leaf volatiles of fresh cut grass,
just please, please understand—
please know
in those beautiful, rare instances when the sunshine drips through the cracks—
I promise I am still trying to grasp it.
Bursting, overripe
We’re all yearning so desperately for softness,
for the rose gold of sunrise to filter through the
wide open windows, set the dust motes alight
and glowing.
To fold dough back in on itself while
an old fashioned radio plays old fashioned hits
and the flour falls like snow and
the smell of cinnamon tickles your nose.
To kiss, gently, the nape of their neck.
To bite, lightly, at their collarbone.
To fall asleep with limbs entwined
and hearts full to bursting,
overripe, sweet, and unable to imagine
what it felt like to hunger.
