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CONNECT WITH MARS
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Poetry
Lost Martians
I looked behind the dryer where socks, mittens, and dust bunnies crouch in shadows and lint. I looked inside the closets. I looked under the bed where I’ve found mp3 players, earplugs, and bad dreams.… [more]
Christopher
Teeth laid in porcelain face— the skin, molars. Bone-colored, carrying bridges. Come to me, angular body and hands clutching a book. Its blue cover’s threaded, paled in age. You read about brothers—a story of birds… [more]
Ceasefire
Battle, like fighting for peace. Day and Night. Blind tears of rage no one Hears or knows of, save those few I don’t horrify yet, who see me more Clearly than I see myself. Remember.… [more]
Green Thumbs
When Poison Ivy appears at my backyard gate the Martians offer bouquets of Virginia creeper and woven crowns of red-tongued honeysuckle. I’m so startled that Dr. Isley is in my garden— butterfly bush, tea roses,… [more]
Sick
I couldn’t stop saying it was “sick” to see her in a college hallway, having last annoyed each other in eighth grade. What I meant was that I liked her, that I loved to follow… [more]
Quarry Letter
My carnivorous darling, my adored Predator, I long to be torn Limb from limb from limb by your Jewel-studded jaws I wish be ripped to pieces Rent in two I want to be devoured as… [more]
I Hope One Day You Will Learn How to Use the Oyster Knife
I make a list of things I don’t know: 1) The precise hue of your beard when you’re pouring me wine. 2) The name of the kind of bread you bake. 3) The probably obscene… [more]
Mars Vigila
_____Martians don’t masturbate.
She Didn’t Even Know Who He Was
I am wearing a facsimile of glasses worn by a young man when he was shot six times outside his apartment. It was a tragedy and it was infamous so I do not have to… [more]
Epithalamion: An Undetected Life
The Martians have decided to get married. Bridal magazines unfold on the end tables and curl in the humidity of the bathroom. Every weekend they take the city bus to the mall, to David’s, and… [more]
Retroactively Potent
Wanting to use ‘I am your boomerang’ in a poem, I Googled to make sure no one else had used the metaphor. But of course someone else had thought of it before. He also wrote… [more]
Probationary Period
Upon being hired by the Company, all new employees must serve a ninety (90) calendar day trial period. Your performance will be carefully monitored during this period. They say there’s cameras but they won’t tell… [more]
Pray to Lord I Hope at Least One of My Ears Doesn’t Pop
i. Sarah had seen him many times shedding tears exclusively for film characters. And so when Fred cried at the departure gate, she thought they might be in a documentary. ii. Paul asked Jeannie, over… [more]
Unidentified Photo on the Internet
The seaweed men patrol the icy town with sticks wrapped in bumbergrass their hooked beaks hissing steam, eyes painted open against the twilight. They trudge the streets like shaggy marionettes, boots cracking glazed tarmac, past… [more]
Last Night
I looked in on you last night. That point-five-second draft of penguin’s breath you thought was just a gust outside the window and the birdcall you’d have sworn was from a horse were clues I… [more]
from COUNTRY
Speaking of my Goya: I had it handy when Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” came out: I had read Woody’s fictionalized autobiography, Bound for Glory (E.P. Dutton: 1943): somehow Arlo’s twenty-minute song-story-recitation moves right along with the… [more]
Five in the Morning
As I lie sleepless in the semidarkness, the birds warm up their voices, & it occurs to me that only birds know what birds are saying, just as only you know how to make me… [more]
forever tender
my friend really likes to say boom shakalaka she’s french or maybe spanish i like it when she gets excited because she wraps her whole lean powerful body around boom shakalaka it spills out all… [more]
Saturday
Today is a Saturday and people either work half day in an unfamiliar branch or they resent their jobs. They put your bowl of chicken noodle on your table without a smile or spoon. You… [more]
Michele Bachmann
I want to see this film and I want to read this book. She is the anachronistic subject of the poem, the woman in the oil painting making love to crabs. I’m a little girl… [more]
Pushed
He stood up from his desk and yelled, _____“Nasty-ass bitch motherfucker!” when I told him to leave, perhaps mistaking my nervous, shocked smile for mocking when he thrusted his hands into my chest on his… [more]
In the Junkyards #6
I road rage on fatal attractions side-swipe your hard trim or destroy your front fascia & pillar. Your juke box boys are out of gas. When the sun went corrupt. I disassemble over your Mach-IV body. Can… [more]
Second Coming
In Sunday School today Miss Hooker said that Jesus is coming but she’s not sure when–coming again, she means. He was here once before, a half-a-Bible ago, before there was anything like we know today.… [more]
One: Strain [of] Reflection
Net the tulips with their own wither. (It will fit better as the colors fade.) To black tripping white, pledge pieces of the fallen. Flatten the table’s surface pretending to be Columbus’ demise. We know… [more]
