Infant’s Wooden Bead Maze, Tossed Among the Weeds
We Can Never Have A Knowledge of God for We Are a Knowledge in God
__________
Gutter Lamb
On Alameda in fancy fed
the swing I was
swung the iron wrung
fence sang my flight
the gutter crowned
me King Tarmac—
my fief paper sleaves
foil wrapper sun my staring
memory thieves
what memory lingers
when abandonment is shearing
when fissures
fats my swool smooth
I miss you
softest echo
zinc, & silvered
sundew
across my belly
Love dissolves for
allegeric reaction
rose screaming rose
milksour without
years revere
& hold me, ear soft with drool
I’d shave my own wool, skin my skin for golden foil
to be held by you again—
my little
black fire,
did you quiver out
new teeth?
with cannibal guardians—
fleece defrauded
by tire tread & flea—
I sip air taste
I sip you falling away—hope
—an amputee’s fingerless compass
pulls north
yet, born, I was never
to you & never will we again herd among
the lies our mothers
lived to hope
Once, you child, child we flew together
lightning back
to stars we wished we held
But now, as ruler
of all we’ve swept away,
will I never neigh again
unborn across your neck
as if bruises hazard
the seasons—Spring
painted over with
this goodbye I never end.
_______
First Kiss
Splatter-sun
set cherries to cellos,
marrow me;
harrow be
wedding dress,
for the breathing
thread survives warp
when our handle
tears free the root
as a practice
of keeping
__________
Gutter Dolls
If there is a place
where all our whimsies go—
feathered headless,
our dolls
nursing futures—
forgive our hands
their medium
In abundance we awaken
the secret things—
other crowns
were ours
before plastic trees
became fixtures
in our fingers
In the forests
skin makes of
desire,
Love, your smile
was a grave
falling
toward my mouth—
I would swallow
all your death
Love, twilight hangnails—
I could not go to the burial—
too many mirrors
black light
drown my pupil
Where have wishes gone—
those gold dawns
where the sparrows
forgot the earth, the branches
& the hunger
There were sciences once
to explain
what replaced horizon
the death of me
dancing for all the lambs.
_________________________________________
Infant’s Wooden Bead Maze, Tossed Among the Weeds
Of all that’s been lost
is there the knowledge
as bead chain
unspools body
when that body shudders
all but for how
our latest—painfully selected—
nostalgia
be to always
turn toward
an innocence?
That is, as we wait
for the poltergeist
to fulfill the promise?
_______________________________________________________
We Can Never Have A Knowledge of God for We Are a Knowledge in God
What if I said the bird refused to fly?
What if I said a bucket was for more than water?
What if I came home to a frantic scratching?
What if I said a responsibility?
What if I said a broom is for cleaning?
What if you refused no dilated eyes?
What if I said no window swallowed?
What if I said a pigeon refused to fly?
What if a broken bucket this blue swinging?
What if I said a broom is for cleaning?
What if eyes were more like pigeon wings?
What if a pigeon could no longer fly?
What if I said we wanted responsibility?
What if a hammer is a broom for cleaning?
What if a bucket was for more than water?
What if a hammer refused cleaning?
What if a responsibility refused more than water?
What if speaking were more than us cleaning?
What if lightning was more us than sighs?
What if eyes were more than waterspeaking?
What if no darkness was our responsibility?
What if to refuse was a kind of duty?
What if was could be more us than breathing?
What if I said we, the bird refusing to fly?
______________________________________________________________________________________
J. Michael Martinez is the author of four collections of poetry, including Heredities, which received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Museum of the Americas, which was a winner of the National Poetry Series Competition and long-listed for the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry. His latest work is Tarta Americana, a finalist for the California Book Award. He is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University. His writings are anthologized in Ahsahta Press’ The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral, Rescue Press’ The New Census: 40 American Poets, and Counterpath Press’ Angels of the Americlypse: New Latin@ Writing.