Maasweeseexay (Monument Mountain)

By Bonney Hartley

Thou

face

forget

thy heart

thy vision. Thou

gaze

on white villages

swarming

        hear

the old world

nations

drown

And many

go down

With the centuries

whiteness

a fearful thing

tumbled down

in fragments

      hear the sound

struggle

murmurs

amid

Paradise

---

BONNEY HARTLEY is a ’25 MFA-Creative Writing candidate at Institute of American Indian Arts and holds an MSocSci in International Relations from University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and founding member of Mohican Writers Circle. She has been a commissioned poet of Bard College and has forthcoming work in the Boundless exhibit catalogue (Smith College Mead Museum), The Last Milkweed (Tupelo Press), and North Berkshire Landscapes: A Celebration (Tupelo Press & Williamstown Rural Lands). Bonney lives within Mohican homelands in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

This poem originally appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 21. 

Photo by Dan Rogers