Rosy’s baby is chestnut-colored and bow-legged. She wears spots like scars. There’s a splotch in the center of her forehead like, in another life, she was shot dead. There’s one on the soft part of her neck like, maybe once upon a time, something took a bite of her. There are some at the bottom of her skinny legs like, perhaps, she crawled out of the Earth while something tried to pull her back in. Rosy’s baby can’t moo, so her mama has become acquainted with the sound of her baby’s hooves on …
Neo–Jerusalem
1 A bird drifts ashore from the sky with a song hung loosely between its beak. ² But, the doors of our hearts have no keyholes. ³ Surely, every other thing will evacuate, except silence. ⁴ There's a century that sits between my incisors, aching. Like a virus, ache becomes a plague when it overstays the night. 5 So in this poem, I shove history into my belly & glory in the fullness of its grief. 6 Once, in my thirsting, I drank the Atlantic Ocean & spelled pain in the long swallow. 7 …
The Balloon Game
“Food” on a yellow balloon “Accommodation” on a pink balloon “Freedom” on a blue balloon “Language” on a green balloon “Education” on an orange balloon Set them free, please tell the world the needs we are asking for now will be paid back after we grow up. We came here through overloaded boats, which almost turned over during storms. We were told it was our temporary stay, we will be brought to another place of peace and safety, where we “might” unite with our parents. We are …
Pretending
1 Every day we carry a creeping calamity on our shoulders. Every day the burden becomes harder to bear, more difficult to ignore, but we are well-versed in pretending. We choose not to look at the poisoned, swelling oceans, at the gathering clouds above, because these are problems for others. When decline falls across our sunlit path, we squint and stumble, curse our tired feet and broken footing, lay blame everywhere else. Surely the wretched animals did this to us somehow—ungrateful! And …
Girlfriend as DiVine, from Disney World
Steaming in the central Florida shade,the morning rays gleam off her plasticleaves. I find her camouflagedagainst another tree: her sun-broadcasting doppelgangerperched only a foot above her crown. She ducks,striding below the baser branches, stiltsbeneath that cedarn cover,manifesting grace, her face painted the greens of Eveand Harlequins: this walking jungle,bountiful with rubber grapes and silkworm fronds,an artificial mulberry, post-Earth. The kids are gone for now: there is a …
Barbershop
As the barber snipped and combed, lathered and groomed, I lapsed into a kind of understanding with the universe. There in his chrome-and-leather swivel chair as his small talk raged in my ears I counted each hair as it fell, a hirsute mail on my chest. The mirrors, berserk with light, redoubled the room. A twitch in time, you might say. Epiphany. I’ve heard it can happen that way. Marc Alan Di Martino is the author of two collections, Still Life with City (2022) and Unburial (2019). …