Carl Martin

The Prescription Drug Challenge

It was while popping members of the "triptan" family
That I began dreaming of the South African killer bee.
Trapped inside a diamond shaped molecule its sticky, yellow venom
Slides inside its slick confinement like wind sliding
Through the furry cuffs of the pussy willow. 
This bee is a good swimmer, but not a great swimmer
Though its talent has been honed bouncing through the waves 
The spray and loneliness of the South Coast. 
I know deep in the knobby, long distance knees of the soul
That it has not spread all the pollen that I would like to spread with it. 
Somehow, in my wise inclinations I fear that this is a truly American
"Stinger," a short spanned hum-vee of the wild Florida grasses
Plowing through the airs and porches like a long-legged advert
In ways that Maeterlinck could never have imagined, 
Not even poetically, "just as Deborah, whose name means Bee"
Judged Israel--in a story I may not actually have read. 
This is the way the blind see, even in Miami. Jehovah forgive us
And excise from the brain: the flesh, the hubbub, and the rub
For sometimes through the digital transference that is all we see
Though the light is blinding. 
And the contest never as numbing as we would like.

No Sop, No Possum, No Jive

We must pit ourselves brutally, 
Testing the tar and pitch
Of the immaculate forefathers. Ditto, etc. 
X-temporizing, scrounging luxuriously
As we climb the intricate cobs, the nipples 
And rosy vellums inscribed with an oriole. 
I see no further than this, though 
I've been lower, into hell's orifice:
Popped back in like a rabbit!

White Cargo

As the adverse account shoos flies
There are still remnants if the dynastic fan. 
Golf balls are tinder in the muzzle of art. 
Camels like glittering ashtrays in the barber's mirror
Sink to their knees with domino teeth:
An advert for a fleshy deck of cards. Only
A straight razor separates hell from marriage. 
And if camels are marriageable they adorn
The stern of this ancient bateau-citerne: The captain
Smiling like a mule. How fitting for the French coast!
Noel, old boy, pass the oxygen--would you?

---

Carl Martin is a McDowell Fellow. His first book Go your Stations, Girl, was published by Arion Press. His recent book Genii Over Salzburg is from Dalkey Archive Press. contents | next