call her name No Mercy

call her name No Mercy

by alyssa hanna

i wrote my name at the top

of a desert but when i blinked the wind had turned

the letters to a sad mouth drunk

with decanters and the fumes

of a scorched soul

the lightning bugs burned

and i couldn’t remember what

they had called me when i

popped through pink

cyst laden flesh screaming into the screaming

cold

an unprepared set of hands

finding their way to

my body as a tomato freshly

picked off a vine

i was an unripe fruit

or maybe a fruit that was far too ripe

what i mean to say

is that i have two birth certificates

but i don’t know which

is actually me

a white rose the purple flower of a carrot

of jaundice of brown eyes rolling

so far back into my brain

that i think i found my sense of purpose

or maybe just the root cut before growth enough

to notice that maybe something was planted

here

i was asking for a book

i could not reach

when i saw the inside of my mind:

dark and running in circles

hurling my name into the air

and wondering if it would ever come down

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alyssa hanna graduated from Purchase College in May 2016 with a degree in Creative Writing and a minor in History. Her poems have appeared in Reed Magazine, The Mid-American Review, The Naugatuck River Review, Cholla Needles, Crack the Spine, Rust + Moth, and was nominated for a 2017 Pushcart Prize. alyssa is an aquarium technician and intends on pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing. She lives in Westchester with her fish and four lizards. follow her @alyssawaking on twitter