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