Rhythm 0

This poem was first published in The Lumiere Review.

It is September, 
somehow. I have grown 
and I have paid for it. 
Another wasted summer bent 
in fruitless prayer below 
the patron saint of capital 
and her most famous face. 
Stoic and stateless, I run 
from nothing. Past life a stone 
in my pocket. Memory an unbreakable fever.
I wasn’t always this way, but who am I 
if not made in Your image, O God, man 
of all men, the apple’s engineer. I fell 
and I found gravity. I ate, which is to say 
I sinned. I did not mean to suffer 
but alas, I was a girl, body embalmed by semen 
and sweat, crumpled form a monument 
to its murderers. How I wanted 
to be good, how it ruined 
the rest of me: I was born again 
on the seventh day, all pain 
and shame and yellow light. 
And You said, Let her bleed. 
And so I did.

Maria Gray is a 22-year-old poet from Portland, Oregon. Recent poems of hers can be found in SICK magazine, antinarrative zine, The Lumiere Review, Kissing Dynamite, and others. Her poem "Rhythm 0" was selected by Luther Hughes as the winner of The Lumiere Review's 2022 poetry contest, and in 2021, she was named as an Adroit Prizes semifinalist by Carl Phillips for her poem "Where Were You When Mac Miller Died." She is the recipient of additional honors from Bates College, Oregon Poetry Association, Portland State University, and the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. A rising senior at Bates College, she studies creative writing and edits Snaggletooth Magazine.