Emily Martin is a writer and teacher from Brooklyn.
from Palisades
To say there is a method and is there are methods To say there is a method there are many methods does your faltering prefer To say there is a choice and does it excavate Or does it spread slowly in a thick pool of glaze discrete In the moonlight and barking what materials do you Does your faltering prefer
Frigid waves Small circuits of shining deconstruction proliferate in triplicate this Supplication is escaping me it has escaped me the name of your sister and her cousin they Hutted down in the winding daylong chatter Chanting Hunting parties hanging on the wall Leave tea to steep on the counter
Images begin to well up like confessions A lake balanced atop a mountain An earth drained of water Thousands of crumpled dinosaurs piled across a plain They must have lain like that for centuries The voiceover says Without anyone to clean them up
She measures the breath of an observation The breath of a scream The breath of confession and all that it scrapes out and leaves splattered across the floor A piece of shame Trimmed in crinoline and ribbons A little bit Of specific technical information Not difficult to describe but logistically necessary and thus made vague and subsequently meted out keeps them dependent what materials do you Does your settling prefer
A declaration of nonhomogeneity Concerning the sky and the earth you will have to choose and articulate you will have to define and make distinct Which lives we have grieved What steeps low in these leaves Settling waterdust crouching at the bottom of the cup Don’t mention it Forget it on the counter until it chills Forms a skin Islands of mold blooming across the surface flat-bottomed and rootless a scream and an observation in an empty house with an old desk
Am I not responding to your text message or have I died suddenly alone in my room would you be angry first and then sad or the other way around you will have to choose and articulate you will have to— Slack-jawed and scrolling a hotel on a cliff It’s like you’re so lonely you don’t even realize how lonely you are she said maybe intimacy is the radical thing is I can’t tell how easy it should be I can’t tell you how easy it is Only fifteen Picking the little gristles of the day out from the meat Falling off the bone Just
The glamour of television journalism or living alone in an apartment that is sunny in the mornings and in the afternoons I am intensely ambivalent about it