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Chris Martin

Two poems



G

And then to wake with gardenias

           Behind a veil of hair

           Stomach aching for tomatoes
           And egg salad
                                    To go
           With a garden
                                     Variety insouciance

           Down Seventh Avenue, vents
           Gurgling steam

Stepping into traffic as god would

           Do to ogle
           These schoolgirls more

           Often. I cry
                               In a burly shaft
           Of light, go

                     Hungry every seven minutes
           Or so

Darkness flares in the coil of your seashell

           Ears far

           From any ocean mouthing
           The horizontal sun              Eyes

           Seesawing
                             The skyline, I

           Leave a footprint dappled
           With soot on your roof

           Gallop down the stairway  
           Into an icy wave of stars


Q

I fade from my own ‘life’ like

Parting a lion
                      From its claw

Given to quixotic forms

           By the expiring sense

           Of a body, its threads

           Of nervous disquiet drawn

Through limb by the head’s
                                              Tacit whim
As if there was a difference

Between lamb & iamb, one
                                              Led, slit, bled
                           The other
                                      Corralled by force
Of mind, stilled there
                           In the stagnant queue
Of line
           Life so ‘life-like’ & thus
                                      So vastly

           Unreal I turn to the quixotic  



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