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 …
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). …
“I think sometimes I am not woman, but…”
incubator, talking point, someone’s mother, sister, daughter, girlfriend—at least I could be. Sometimes the closet, and by that, I mean the hanger. Sometimes both the case & the point, asking for it, a burden, a dowry, a score to be settled, a martyr. The hunger & its clarity. Always, the target for the devil’s advocate. Sometimes, feminine divine—both Kali, the killer & Persephone, raped then killed. Sometimes the oppressor herself, white feminism with all its allegiance to …
A Physiotherapy with A Bird
First assignment: Underline the words that describe you. My father has a hunchback for beauty. Gunshot in Borno— girls do not know how to smile. Last summer, like before, the sun is an assault in the mouth of a dwarf Jamal threw a rock at my pelvis, Simi fell in love, so she sang Complete me. This is a type of poem for ghosts. Sometimes, when I try to cry, I am often betrayed by my tears Second Assignment: Use those words to form the mouth of a poem. The language of our grief is a …
Ars Poetica
slimy & joy-wet. you're night's work of art, hatched from nothing into the belly of a jaw—softening the hard ground of language. your pronouns: ruffled between edges, as the heft threatens to refund your mother in past perfect tense. my tongue, raised towards your image—spills the purple consonant where a curve ends. say, I howl into wetness, shards of you grieve out in thanksgiving. you, scolding bronze into portrait. light waylays me, till I whiten & duplicate. whiten & play …