Poetry from Nova Martin – America's favorite transwoman feminist lesbian druidess poet
The slaves have gone.
Euripedes, Thucycles;
the slaves have not gone.
The slaves have left their
robes and linens.
Their guitars and banjos
are leaning on the fence.
The slaves take down
the senator’s eye
and in place
put in the olive seed.
They eat and sleep in
the commoners’ homes,
the track houses and
cheap apartments,
not starting a revolution
that starts a revolution.
The slaves.
Should I devein my shrimp?
I bought it in a place that
sells people shrimp.
People who work for the people
who own the place that
sold me my shrimp have
told me
it would be best of me to
devein my shrimp,
but they’ll also sell to me
a service called “shrimp deveining”.
So now I wonder,
should I devein my shrimp
or pay someone who earns
less than me a little money
to devein my shrimp?
Poetry by W.T. tuqMairtin
The little girl is talking to the trees
But the trees won’t wake up
To tell her what she needs
How her hair is
Who her friends will be
What side of town her family should
Live
The trees are old
They’ve lived long enough
They think it’s stupid what they’d
Have to explain
So they stay asleep
And the other kids avoid
The little girl talking to the trees
Because she’s different
And won’t walk around in circles
In the parking lot
Like the rest of the kids are told
To do so by their P.E. teachers
Because it’s a part of the curriculum
The planning of making tomorrow’s
Americans
be like this
Poetry by W.T. tuqMairtin
When you kicked over those boxes
they knocked over the other boxes
containing the styrofoam cups.
It broke a lot of them.
You yelled “fuck you” at the boss one time
and you’ve never worked
when you weren’t being supervised.
I have yet to see you
put the broom and the dustpan up
at the end of the day.
The civil clerk is a good person
and usually is anyways
good
left up to others
to take care of tasks
would nothing become
someone else’s job is for Sunday
or some day of learning
does until done
what is needed on a morning
all parents die
Poetry by W.T. tuqMairtin
She seemed happy at the end of the day. I’ll
never say if this was the case. Her pay is
low, but I know she was happy to be back around
other people after being alone in her home for
five days during the ice storm. Nearing middle
age never scared her, she said she still loved to
rock out to the Steve Miller Band and during each
birthday she treated herself like a five year old
child at a pizza parlor party. There was something
wild about her in this moment, like seeing her
then, on one of those birthdays. It could be
that she was just glad to be back at work, or
what some would call “doing something”. I
personally think the greatest thing she’s done
all day is to appear bounding with happiness
at the end of the day, for me, herself and the
rest of the world. Even for the people she’ll see
in the convenience store on her drive home
when she stops to get some milk, shredded
orange cheese and eggs, to make dinner for her
husband who lives in another house a couple
acres behind her own house.
Poetry by W.T. tuqMairtin
There was one long ago
a human who lived as one
but now the one of the collectively
none
had done the undone
that returns the silence of the era.
The ones and twos stand with shoulders and skin
and worry which is which, who will see
who will see me
do the things I do
standing as such in a way that others may be
looking at me.
I posture and fix my hair, set out,
go to the shopping center, greet, handshake
look out for life as American Idol on TV.
Poetry by W.T. tuqMairtin
Today she is working
in the sunlight of a courtyard,
bringing police officers and civil clerks
tortilla chips and soda-water.
Rosa is bringing the sunlight on trays
to her masters.
They issue dollar bills and sustenance.
I found myself looking for people
when
the world had locked them away
and privatized them.
Put them in beige boxes to do
their work everyday from
eight a.m. to five o’clock p.m.
Placed them in orderly housing,
turned on the TV for them to
stare into and
handed them bills and mortgages
to adhere to.
Driving their Ford trucks and Chevy’s.
I looked in the forests,
over grasslands,
under real skies, clean air,
with the ancestral stars at night.
I looked and no one was there,
learning the anthem of the cosmos,
the form
of the human
that is being,
the kind of consciousness suspended
in time.
No,
I looked and they were watching TV.
O life of this bird,
breaded and deep-fried.
Padded hands of god
laying the skinless muscles down
by auroras of gold and marble.
To seasoning, to spice, to oil.
For the oligarchs who
spend their vacation in God’s house:
the celebrity-chef cuisine.
For the executives who do their will:
the Palm Springs five-star cuisine.
That we may be so fortunate
for them to bring it down to us lesser,
the human beings.
Amen.
novamartinpoetry.com 