M. Miranda Maloney

m.mirandamaloney

BIO

M. Miranda Maloney is the founder of Mouthfeel Press in El Paso, Texas. She is the author of The Lost Letters of Mileva (Pandora Lobo Productions Press, 2014) and The City I Love (Ranchos Press, 2011). Her poetry and essays have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, MiPoesias, The Catholic Reporter, The Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum, and others. She is poetry editor for BorderSenses Literary Journal, and Outreach Educational Writer for the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum. She lives in the outskirts of El Paso with her husband and three children. 

Tearing Down

When the dozers break the spine of

yuccas, bury the creosote, the sap of soaps

 

under plans for another subdivision,

where do the burrow owls go,

 

the lavish tarantulas, the sweeping paws

of roadrunners and slender mice?

 

When the raptor disappears amidst rising clouds

of sand and cataracts sweep the last of

 

dung beetles, no mounds of brush to hold

the rain cheerfully back

 

what do we do?

When all is dust and concrete, what will be left

 

to astonish?

 

 

©The Acentos Review 2015