By: Mariah Gomez
Major: English
Year: Junior
Hometown: San Antonio, TX
smooth concrete separates seas of mixed foliage,
immaculate, buzzed forest fur,
shoved into shapes: trapezoids, parallelograms, semi-circles,
yet trios of blades stick out in the turf, swaying in wait, the lanky dissenters.
groundcover swells in the pen, meticulously molded by machines into level sheets,
yet littered with taller tendrils, lonely survivors surrounded by trimmed brothers
that stand up, shaking, shivering,
as distant, grating roars of mechanical beasts signal the next massacre.
trees are shorn up to their heads, limbs naked, tops bushy,
made mimics and doppelgangers of one another,
yet each have rebelled, reaching out with long limbs,
not up but out, barely keeping within their limits dictated by the chalky borders,
pale lines crushing them to their space until tree and shrub, limb and stem tangle
one another. hedges boxed into bricks, tall and thin, thick and stout, resist.
in the dense body of twisted stems, suffocating sisters thrust their limbs past the lines,
signaling through hitchhiking digits for support
from the pattering feet of bystanders rushing past.
tendrils of groundcover violently oscillate in wind,
caressing against the bottom onlookers, their touches incessant, coarse,
ordering them to halt, help.
not one sneakered limb stays,
and as the growling of the machines grows,
stuttering shrubs, trees, hedges, and lawn tense as their wind abandons them,
stiff like the statues decorating the landscape,
ones that crush the plants they’re set upon.