selected poems. fall 2016.
© 2016 Audra Martin
prophet
the love of my life
looks like jesus christ
if jesus was a garbage man
who buys his shirts
at a thrift store in bedstuy
the only miracle
he’s ever performed
was stopping my heart
and starting it right back up again
my lover is a slow burn
like the slow rise of heat
as his fingers trace my shoulder
like the cinnamon whiskey
jesus distills in his living room
my lover resembles an angel
if wings were his arms wrapped tightly
suffocating the belief
that he is anything less than a prophet
please don’t turn into a poem
my favorite thing about her
is how hard she is to write about
i’ve never quite had the words
for things that make me happy
and the day i stopped loving you
was the day i found a new addiction
and the day i stopped loving you
was the day i saw myself clearly
and the day i stopped loving you
was the day i picked up my pen
and i started to write someone else’s
poems down her spine
someone with words for the good things
you see, i’ve written a thousand ways to lose my mind
but i can’t write one damn metaphor for her smile
and she makes me hope i never find the words
proof
she asked me how i knew,
and so i told her;
i tried to take the pills,
but the boy washed
them down the drain
so they gave me different pills
that were supposed to make me better
but i found that they don’t work that well
when you wash them down with liquor
then the boy quit me
but he would not leave my bed
so i quit washing down pills
with tequila
and he left me alone
in a vacuum
cut open
blue flows out of my wrists,
flows back into my heart,
flows into strands of my hair,
flows into my closed eyes,
and when i opened them
everything was blue
the grass, the trees,
the sky was bluer than it was supposed to be
she was there
and she was navy
like the sky and the water we stared at
when she held my hand for
the first time
and in the silence between us i wanted to write her a poem
in the silence between us i knew
this is how i writer is born.
blunt force
we were stoned in a bathroom
in a hotel room in san francisco
we were stoned on a balcony
overlooking the colorado mountains
we were stoned under a bridge
by the river in austin
we were stoned, we were stoned,
we were stoned
and i wondered why
the most impossible things
for our heads to forget
are the things our hearts
secretly want to remember
love,
like trauma,
defies
a woman of poetry
another poet once told me
poetry is about what you do not say
so now all i do is write about
the way you don’t kiss me
through closed teeth
or how the tan branches of your arms
outstretch,
but not to touch me
or how i can’t tell you i love you
without it syncing to the rhythm
of my heartbeat
self-love
she had spent her life
tending the fires from
bridges burnt around her
until one day she realized
the only fire worth preserving
was in her belly
how to write about him
step 1 –
do research into black holes
and how universes form.
determine if there are any parallels
to how he makes you feel both omniscient and
combustible at the same time.
step 2 –
find the words for how liberating
it is to love something you can’t have.
try to articulate the way the artist in you
was born the first time he put his hands
on you, and then took them away, and how
you’ve come to depend on that desire
as the life force for being able to create anything.
step 3 –
figure out what it is about loving
someone so goddamn imperfect
that it gives you permission
to be you and please,
try to make it clear
that these feelings empower you.
it is different than with the others.
look, there is still fire in your eyes
and hunger in your belly.
wordsearch
i once spent an entire afternoon
trying to write acrosstic poems
out of your name
loving you allowed me
as an artist to exist
between real inspiration
and nothing.
desiring you was the fuel
for my ability to create
and i wrote a thousand poems
that might have seemed different
on the surface but
rarely is anything new.
you have become the only thing
i know how to write about but
being right is absolute nonsense.
art[work]
like an angel carved in marble
you are a work of art
precious,
and shrouded in mystery
but we are long past
the innocence of the kincaids
and we can’t survive on
pennies [read: wishes]
tossed in fountains
when i met you a renaissance started
somewhere in south brooklyn
and the colors in my head
have been blending ever since
are you my elizabeth siddal
inspiring preservation in oil paints,
or are you rossetti
sucking me dry?
i went down to the market
in search of an answer
but all i found was goblins
and a blank canvas
cristina calderón
we stare at each other full of desire
on opposite sides of a line
we both know not to cross.
mamihlapinatapei is the only word
to describe this phenomenon.
it is a yahgan word –
a nearly extinct language –
spoken by only one woman.
so i know there is one person in the world
who can put into words what my heart feels.
room 627 in a famous hotel
i rent rooms for free
in the hotel between my ears,
but i am the house mother
and i control the way
my girls give themselves away.
i make sure the men know
they will pay for what they take,
until i realize they’ve left
pillows under sheets
skipping town for free.
i want to burn the hotel down
to be free from this debt.
trigger warning
you should know
you did not break me
when i attack you
with my sharp edges
these weapons were
carved long ago by
someone who was too
young to know their
tongue was sharper
than a knife
poison
we were two parts ies
one part saliva
one part rage
shaken, not stirred
i can’t tell you how
often i blacked out
drunk on us.
texas
houston,
we have a problem
austin left me crushed
between two shipping crates
and i’m unsure if
the raindrops pelting the roof
are a metaphor
for the way you make my
soft heart slam
into my ribcage
