I Want Some Land by Mary Block

I want some loneliness justified by my location. 

 

I want to purchase a piece of the earth. 

 

I want to be in on that giant joke. 

 

I want a fence around my family. 

 

I want the burden of aging infrastructure. 

 

The urge to complain about all the things 

 

I own. I want the place to look overgrown. 

 

Like, potted plants in the bathroom. 

 

Big buxom banana leaves. Ferns. 

 

I want an alarm. I want to love a place 

 

so much I install a siren. 

 

I want a gut renovation. 

 

Maintain some original details 

 

without all the darkness and wasted space. 

 

I want some land. I want the earth 

 

and the sky above it. 

 

I want the mineral rights, the air rights. 

 

I want the right to take legal action 

 

if someone encroaches on my boundaries. 

 

I want to be right when I say 

 

this whole damn thing is mine.

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Mary Block recently moved home to Miami after an 18-year sojourn in the northeast. Her poems have been featured in RHINO, Nimrod Journal, Sonora Review, Rattle, and Conduit, among other publications. She is a graduate of New York University's Creative Writing Program, a 2012 finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a Pushcart Prize nominee.