Poems
The Hornet
for Tyler Flynn Dorholt
Nervous pennant
bodega shade
hornets don’t bite
too alive still
notched by today’s caustic
sun’s slop-glutted face
and tearing pieces of crown
to forge taste and jewel
night into an endless prolepsis
I think I want too alive
like a surge of hornets
cloud to form nuptial flight
these are scientific terms
and we are ethologists
and all that
we lust after
will animate
in curve
from one pheromone
to entire syntax
garish pockets of light
in someone else’s pollen
so in frenzy we’d know
just how ancient we’ve grown
seething with the light of friends
who did never stop for law
I read all the directions
backwards to stave off logic
and claw each sunny
curl as it breaks
against the beachhead
of my face
to breathe
new pollen
on the telephone
everyone loves cancer
we should talk hornet
if by talking hornet
you mean dance it off
The Trash
for Zachary Wollard
Learning too
hard really
claw broken open
I sniff fringes
as they happen here
a little forest breathing
over the neighbors’ new trash
as it crinkle crinkle shines
like I’m saying to the children
you have to feel the shadow
of this plane’s loaded escape
like you were its planet
nose folding tomorrow’s weather
into a candy wrapper-
like eye patch
to block hubris
can I
I can’t
believe the sun
just fucking disappeared
into that flaky building
new tenant no keys
driving toward the other’s language
or just humming trash again
I got down on my knees
which crinkled slightly forest breathing out
like that haunting Zombies chorus
I can’t stop shaaaaa-kiiiiing
and instead just up
and disappear into finance
trash breathing in
the tremor’s double
at night
in July
like that Larry
Rivers’ painting on
the fourth floor of
the Brooklyn Museum where
the eyes of the picnic
cross and blur to bring forth
more family and then more family
The Opening
for Erica Svec
Roses seep
a beach
black paper elbows
and keep John
on ceiling little smirk
for curly detergent readiness
he wants us to break
open heart cookie cloud day
to simply crowd out lack
until it rides tireless and bare
and a quaint Bud sprouts
in the deep plastic black
where our hands meet
our forever suffering nightlife
to charge victorious
in blue char
so summer
subnormally wrecked
as many petals
sleeping over as
we can find beaches
to write our names
mine is trash and forest
full of alias rich trees
but the only reason I came
here tonight is that you’re here
like an aura that’s stuck
in the blue-green position
we’re already so stoned
on the faces’ architecture
so look dangerous
for a moment
look sexy
for peace
The Face
for Will Edmiston
Will you
still hear
me can’t you?
waking wet eucalyptus
in a crumpled horn
the interface is sacred
can the interface be sacred?
is it still a séance
if you can’t say it stopped?
the rain is in the mail
my face is on call
there’s interference to think of
and it’s all just
a kind of cursive
that keeps belongingness
swept in abeyance
of holy
honeysuckle but
can honeysuckle holy?
I can helicopter
mosquito from the office
so that all hymns
are a form of expectation
I can loss block fever
on the verge of going white
if that will feed the eucalyptus
it’s like one coffee and
my face is on call
ready to mask out
on a drowsy coworker
or beam honey
into daybreak’s latent
blood crust
swallowing face
under street’s amber
dial tone I
can see the end
beg the beginning’s return
can see the face’s ghost
tread past in traffic’s grin
Chris Martin is the author of Becoming Weather (Coffee House 2011) and American Music (Copper Canyon 2007). He is also the author of several chapbooks, including How to Write a Mistake-ist Poem (Brave Men 2011) and the forthcoming enough (Ugly Duckling 2012). After editing the online journal Puppy Flowers for its entire 11-year run, he is now an editor at Futurepoem books, where he curates the response blog Futurepost.
