Wind-Marked Graves

this summer I learned to forage in my grandfather’s yard/ The caps of mushrooms converging and filling the gaps between the coiled hose/ a sign of fertility/ the mushrooms feeding on nitrogen rich earth/ the kind that cycles death like a production line/ unlike the dense dry clay we collect across town/ where we gather seeds in holes/ we’ve dug every spring/ have watered and fail to sprout/ we have only the remains of a yucca/ the developers failed to foil/ it grows tall in the summer by the window and sways in the night/ the buds whacking at the glass/ falling to the ground that will not accept new dead/ the wind will come and blow/ until the grounds welcome/ and consume

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Ashley Robles is your average chronically ill Hispanic bisexual and the only person you know that still wears fingerless gloves. She studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Austin and has been catching up on sleep and video games ever since. Her work has been published in The South Carolina Review, The Poet’s Billow, and Unstamatic, and is forthcoming in Alebrijes Review. She is a recipient of The Bermuda Triangle Prize and a part of Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s 2022-2023 Poetry Collective cohort. She can be found online everywhere @mzashleypie