Catherine Esposito Prescott is the author of the chapbooks Maria Sings (dancing girl press, 2017) and The Living Ruin (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Catherine earned an MFA in Creative Writing — Poetry from New York University, and her poems have appeared in several literary journals and anthologies, including Bellevue Literary Review, MiPOesias, Pleiades, Poetry East, Rattle, Spoon River Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, The Orison Anthology (Vol. 1, 2016), Tigertail: A South Florida Poetry Annual (Vol. X: Sunstruck Matches), and 99 Poems for the 99 Percent. Catherine is cofounder and co-curator of the SWWIM Reading Series based in Miami Beach, Florida. Please visit her at www.catherineespositoprescott.com
One Maria, Two Maria, Three Maria, Four
One Maria orders decaf, the others cafe con leches.
One Maria speaks Portuguese, another Italian,
another Spanish, another English. One Maria left
her firstborn son in Peru. Another Maria was infertile
until her fifth IVF treatment. One Maria has a boy
and a girl. One Maria has a dog she calls Baby
Girl. One Maria waves to you in the park, the other
always looks away. One Maria once knew a man
who grew a butterfly in his chest. One Maria hiked
the Andes with her true love. One Maria eloped,
her belly swollen like a papaya. One Maria was the first
in her family to go to college . Two Marias are lawyers.
One Maria has a PhD. All the Marias are bilingual. One
Maria believes in a higher being. The others are not
so sure. One Maria prays to Santa María for her husband
to return safely from Cuba. One Maria prays to Santa
María for her husband to be taken in the next huracán.
One Maria finds a lump in her right breast. Another
Maria finds two in her left. Two Marias have a biopsy;
one flies 1,100 miles for a double mastectomy.
One Maria is healthy. One Maria is overweight. One
Maria practices yoga. The other Maria never saw it coming.
One Maria lost her madre, her tía, her abuela to the same
disease. One Maria laughs out loud. The other Maria
has a laugh that flutters in her chest. One Maria
cries herself to sleep. One Maria feasts on pomegranate
seeds believing they will heal her. Another Maria
buys Maria cookies, wolfs down the entire sleeve
with a glass of red wine and dreams herself to sleep.