Faux Haiku for 34

seems in life’s late spring
fields of pimples went barren,
yet scars from picking remain.

now in life’s summer
crops out of nose, ears, grow free,
yet eyes weaken, bones slower.

what in life’s autumn
will I love? gray, fewer growths,
salves, pills, thwarting winter’s death?

Flood

After the Flood, we bucket the black water
in plywood coffins and push them downriver,
one by one like toxic family members: hepatitus
grandmothers, emphysemia grandfathers, and all
we wish is to catch amnesia of the tongue: words
would surely disrupt the ebb, the coffins' descent.
I cannot forget how the death seemed to hover
like cormorants, some teetering in the cold breeze;
others whipping waves, just like trains going home.

Green Peppers

swing in the young Ohio summer
dusk, those swollen jade moons,
those eyes that flirt, so you pucker
and take a bite. But you don't
eat them like apples. You pluck them
off twig-thin vines when they're not ripe
because they're never ripe, and you pull
off the stem which sounds like someone
snapping their fingers, like Neil Armstrong,
who snapped his after that one small step.
(his green peppers were freeze-dried).

Green moons now rise each noon,
like the canaries in coal mines,
on death's lookout, alerting us far
too late. Sun amputates the green
of my grandfather's eyes, the lunar
peppers eclipsed by wicked Apollo,
wrinkling his face, ripples of brown
on his jade moons once full of breath.
Now October and (his green peppers
frozen dry) I must bury them. Watch
how I close his eyes, how I pull dead
roots, wait for next summer's moons.

Jim Foy, Photographer of Trees

Remember photographing the alphabet
trees: cold cedar, sweet maple, red ash.
Crossing the slick elm-bridge to get
a focused view of J all I saw was slush
birling in the creek. You hailed me over
like a bandit with his loot, me on all fours,
bones rattling on the petrified log, shivers
of a stone. But when your voice spun gyres
of heat, saying picture yourself above the tree,
I untangled my feet, arms stretched out
like a T walking. I saw your photography
of us, years later: me, standing with no quit
in my eyes, inside the curve of J and you,
hands on my shoulders, still the frame for me.

Homage to Mother

I've dreamt you thin mother thin
as maple saplings, orchid stems.
Your face sits in the pane
when I leave home and I wish
mother wish you'd dream thin.

My children ask where's grandma
as I tuck them into bed. Dream children
dream of grandma thin as maple boughs,
orchid roots, and love her
though she cannot love herself.

- J. Martin

Pacific Pantoum*

The ropes are drenched gray
On the harbor's brittle dock.
The nets are dumped today,
But the men wear no clocks.

On the harbor's brittle dock,
Night heaves its body down.
But the men wear no clocks,
They don't see the light of town.

Night heaves its body down.
Hands wrestle fish in the dark.
They don't see the light of town,
Their eyes knotted to their work.

Hands wrestle fish in the dark.
Sore labor's flesh has stains.
Their eyes knotted to their work,
Sailors on deck complain.

Sore labor's flesh has stains
From time spent on the ocean.
Sailors on deck complain.
The sails heaved by drenched men.

From time spent on the ocean,
They long to step on land,
Where sails heaved by drenched men
Won't deny their words, their brand.

* The pantoum is a form of poetry derived from a Malay verse form. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern.

Baseball at Nine

My memories of baseball start with leather,
dirt, and grass, and welts on various body
parts. Sadly, I could not catch til I was nine.
I blamed it on my poor eyesight, my hand.
Giant and made of cowskin, could not follow
The white bullet my brother fired at my head.

But there was something magical I saw in head-
First slides into third, behind dirt clouds, leather
Tagging out a would-be stealer. I could follow
The scent of a hit-and-run by the way the body
Of the runner twitched toward second, his hand
Ever so slightly inching toward the bag, nine

Fingers resting on his knees, but one of those nine
Giving the plan away. Even so young, my head
Was an encyclopedia, a stack full of cards in hand
Soaked into my brain like resin into worn leather.
As I grew older, that passion drew my stringy body
To the field to endure the lumps again by a fellow

Teenager, on the mound, who seemed to want to follow
A path to the majors by plunking me, but I just wanted nine
Innings on the field. In right field, I was seen by nobody,
The coach thought I’d be safe, but just my luck, over my head
A soaring fly ball did everything to avoid the leather
I waved in the air like I was hailing down a plane with my hand,

After all, right field was a desert island, and if a better hand
Could be dealt to me than this lot in life, if I could follow
The swings and pitches of my idols on the cards, with leather
Skin from overexposure to the sun who play a full nine
All summer, I’d gladly take that, I thought, as the ball headed
Over my flailing reach, parents and players laughing at my body

Laid out on the grass. I was perfectly content to retire my body
To the stands of my favorite ballpark, #2 pencil gripped in hand
To fill out the scorecard at the 1990 Series as my team heads
Into the fabled 9th inning. Our rookie shakes at the plate, follows
The pitch from the hurlers hand, sees not just one ball but nine,
Grits his teeth, grips his bat, one last breath, swings at the leather

Baseball soaring over all the heads on the field, no body
Breathes, baseball now burnt leather rawhide and yarn, no hands
Will ever touch the homers I hit, legends I lived, when I was nine.

Peeling Oranges


I am waiting in line at the A&P
with my sack of Neptune oranges
and I think of my brother at work
whittling away the topsoil with his
drenched, rusted, mechanical claws,
his nose hairs binding like wet ivy.

In 1985 he was 16 in Ft. Thomas
driving a 1969 blue Chevy Malibu
big block with 5-star aluminum mags
and he'd come home with a crab
in his ass because he'd lost a drag race.
I need some more power, he'd say.

Too many years passed before
I realized that my brother had to
work at smoothing the stutters out
of his engine, had to raise the idle
from time to time to let out exhausts
that eat away the gut like warm beer.

I understand those hot evenings alone
on the tiny porch, sitting on the ledge,
emptying the yo-yo from my small hand,
letting it fall into the garden encumbered
by dandelions and trash, then tugging up.
My brother would drive home with sacks

of oranges, saying they helped his muscles,
would walk up to the porch with a shine
in his eyes, and flick away his cigarette.
Somehow I think he was never my brother
as much as he was when we'd sit together
on the stoop till midnight, peeling away

orange rinds with his Michelangelo fingers,
talking of bolting this damn city with nothing
but a pocket full of money and his Malibu.
Then he'd say, What makes you happy, and
all I could say was hanging out, but now in line
I recall thinking when my brother peels oranges.


© copyright 2008 - Jay Martin