If I could turn a moment into eternity,
it would be this one, lying beneath
the purple robe locust as carpenter bees
fight over the blossoms and lesser goldfinches
scoop air into their bills and return it
to the sky as song. But where would you be
in that forever? Inside the house writing code
for this new world we’re entering, one
that doesn’t make the desert smell like candy
or sound like penny whistles played by children.
I want you in this world of the senses, not
that one made of two numbers and strings
of code that have nothing to do with molecules,
with life, with bark and feather and flesh.
What I mean is: Love me until we’re stung
through and through, until the rocks
we’re lying on scratch a new language
into our backs. Don’t tell me how to make
a world that looks real. Live with me in this one.
If not forever, then now and now and now.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 28, Issue 1.
Dana Henry Martin’s work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Barrow Street, Cider Press Review, FRiGG, Laurel Review, Mad in America, Meat for Tea, Muzzle, New Letters, Rogue Agent, Sheila-Na-Gig, SWWIM, Trampoline, and other literary journals. Martin’s poetry collections include the chapbooks Love and Cruelty (Meat for Tea, forthcoming), No Sea Here (Moon in the Rye Press, forthcoming), Toward What Is Awful (YesYes Books), In the Space Where I Was (Hyacinth Girl Press), and The Spare Room (Blood Pudding Press). Martin was born and raised in Norman, Oklahoma, and currently lives in Toquerville, Utah.
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