• Skip to main content

Carolyn Martin - Poet

“All my life I have tried to find the truth and make it beautiful.” – Sting

  • About
  • Books
  • Publications
  • Sample Poems
  • Events
  • Let’s Connect
  • My Blog

Sample Poems

To the Woman Who Gave Nordstrom My Email Address by Mistake

 

Call it happenchance or a high-tech fluke, but what fun

shadow-shopping you and the purchases I’d never make.

Take your over-priced Chelsea Crewneck Top®

and Levi’s® High-Waisted Tapered Jeans.

Fashion statements, you’d claim, but what about Goodwill:

lightly-used designer clothes priced more rationally.

I must admit it tickled me you sent back that ugly yellow hat.

$68 was absurd and straw is nothing to be thrilled about.

How about a visor––like the glittery one I bought last year?

My $3.00 flea market steal earned slews of compliments

and would have saved your face from $65

3-star powder that couldn’t screen out anything.

By the way, I’m confused by the size of your clothes.

Last year you were a 16. Now you’re X-small.

Weight Watchers? Jenny Craig? How many snips and tucks

did Nordstrom make for all those alteration bills?

By now, I feel I know you well enough to share

a memory: clothes shopping with a mother who critiqued

my teenage size and weight to tears. Some days

I’m still in Christianson’s Department Store, hiding

in a dressing room, hating to be looked at, hating

to be seen, and … But ignore all that. I have to tell you

I’ve started to receive reservations for your Hilton Hotel stays

and tracking your whereabouts intrigues.

Since there’s intimacy in knowing what you wear over

your oh-so-slender shoulders, arms, hips, and legs,

perhaps we could meet poolside in Palm Springs next week.

I’ll be the one flaunting her ambitious breasts under

an off-white T, her thighs under red Bermuda shorts –

sizes XL – purchased at my local Target store.

_________________

Warning

     When confronted with the limits of the known world,

     a 16th-century European cartographer inscribed the warning

     “Here Be Dragons” on a small copper globe. Beware: What lies

     beyond is unexplored – and perilous.

     – Jodi Cobb, “Strange Reflections,” National Geographic, March 2019

 

First you need     a mountain     even a mesa

butte     bluff     or high-rise balcony     will do

any height     to widen     your view    of oceans

forests     canyons     streams    car-clogged arteries

joggers     pacing past     mothers strolling

strollers down     leafy suburban streets

Then find     the edge     where the sky melts     into

topography     and wait     for flames    four legs

a scaly frame     Listen for     roars muting

seagull screams     screeching cars     or voices

quarreling     beyond     your backyard fence

Conjure up     St. George     to ward off     your fear

Listen and wait    How long     is up to you

If they don’t     appear     ease yourself     down

into the world-at-hand     Begin to forage     through

cracks     and chinks     and crevices     through slits

and splits      and rifts     Be aware     unknowns

find     a way      of sneaking through     like love

and loss     grief and regret      prejudice and hate     

Beware of perils     lurking nearby     Investigate

__________________

Cycles

A sunny afternoon with Aimless Love on the patio

and a shepherd pup whining through the backyard fence.

She’s not amused I boarded up the slats she wiggled through

all week. Divots in the lawn, pawed-through flower beds,

fur caught on jagged wood annoyed. Anyway, I was about

to say before the dog butted in, it only takes one

Collins poem to set me off. Yesterday, “The Revenant.”

Today, “More Than a Woman” and I’m back to the NJ night

my Polish aunt slapped my twelve-year-old face. A reminder,

she said. Of what? I raged as she grabbed her cigarette and flicked

its growing ash. To be a woman, she inhaled my eyes, means

a life of pain. From across the dining room, Our first-blood ritual:

my mother’s only words as she wiped her hands of violence

I needed rescue from. I slammed my bedroom door and flung

red-spotted underwear across the room. And this was it: the start

of years plowing through closets and drawers, disavowing

dresses/stockings/girdles/make-up/heat-curled hair and facing

off taunting boys who couldn’t beat me on baseball fields;

of decades redefining cycles borne down centuries, composing

I’m more than a woman to me. I snap the book shut

and shout this anthem to the slanting sun.

–––––––––––––

Partners of Poets Anonymous (POPA) Opening for Business

We are pleased to announce

we are getting organized even as they type.

 

Our name –  alliterative with a snappy acronym –

has been approved along with our statement of intent:

 

We support those who appear – favorably

or not – in their partner’s poetry.

 

We agree even when references are compliments,

they prompt a blushing slump in front row seats

 

while our partners steal the stage and earn

applauds – and often laughs – at our expense.

 

On first Mondays, we’ll gather to commiserate –

in spite of the odds it’s some poet’s birthday –

 

and rotate through bookstores, libraries,

coffee shops, or any other site where poets read.

 

We want our hosts to understand how it feels

to lie naked on a page – even quasi-anonymously.

 

At our kick-off event, we’ll hash out

By-Laws, elect a board, and discuss raising funds.

 

Monies will be earmarked for annual retreats

as far away as possible from poets sitting

 

alone in restaurants, softening their eyes

surreptitiously across a glass of wine –

 

waiting, no doubt, to scribble everything

we do or say in a treacherous notebook.

 

A caveat: If one day we discover we miss

our smile, eyes, shoulders, turn of head, or timbre

 

of voice landing in the monument of a poem;

or if we say something no one else could say

 

and find it abandoned on some wordless road;

or if we start to grieve for those sweet renderings

 

of who we are in well-crafted verse – if that day

arrives, we’ll disband and burn our By-Laws.

____________________________

Pay attention and you’re saved.

 It pays to pay attention  – which is not

like paying bills, the pizza delivery guy,

or the piper – wherever he may pipe.

 

Nor is it like paying compliments,

taxes, penalties, dues, visits, respect,

or up-down-forward-back for anything.

 

Crime doesn’t pay, unless it does.

Neither does arrogance when you nip

your own line to title this poem.

 

But when oblivion’s about to hit

pay dirt and saving’s worth a fight,

rouse attention, slumped in the doorway

 

of your shuttered mind. Focus its eyes

on barefaced possibilities peeking

through blossoms of an aging cherry tree.

––––––––––––––––––––––

Mandate

To those of you who will not die today:

walk through your home and bless the open doors,

the table set, the breadth of sun lounging

on the Persian rug. Catalog the small

contentments you have earned: eager words vying

for a poem, work you’ll never have to do

again, backyard squirrels that entertain.

Praise every squill, crocus, and bleeding heart

that dares subvert winter’s calendar.

Invite young mysteries in and seat them

between answers you have no questions for

and ponderables still unclassified.

It goes with saying, listen attentively.

Then tomorrow, if it arrives, repeat.

____________________________________________________________

To My About-to-be-Ex Therapist

About our session this afternoon, I’m confused:

you diagnosed my ergophobia with sadness

in your voice. No offense, but after 40 years

of Type-A overdrive, I’ve earned this new paradigm.

Put this in your notes: I’ve replaced chronic threats

of nothing-to-do with perfected laziness.

My fear of boredom? Relieved by mindfulness.

From my ergonomic chair, I spend hours

tracing the texture of walls and studying

slight tilts of Chinese serigraphs.

I’m happy to report the woman side-saddling

the panther’s back hasn’t slipped off yet

and the lotus pond hasn’t flooded our family room.

As for the cobwebs swaying behind the étagère?

They haven’t ceased to captivate. Anyway,

thanks for helping me define work as what

I say it is. My business suits and black pumps

are up for grabs at Goodwill; my office files

free of contracts, flight plans, and syllabi.

I’m noodling with a blog about the joys

of nothing much. Maybe you’ll subscribe.

___________________________________________

Waiting for a Bus to the Cloisters Museum

She rushes down the brownstone steps

and asks me to zip up her floral dress

since her husband’s still asleep and she’s late

for brunch with friends whose spouses bore

them to the brink of death she says

as she pulls her hair off her neck so I can trace

the curve of her back past a half-slip’s waist

over the bra that defies gravity

to pearls announcing elegance

and I’m embarrassed by a brush

with faultless skin as my nun’s short veil tangles

with the wind from buses zipping by

and when she says without judgment

or dismay You’re a rarity it’s true –

a stranger dressed in black appearing

just in time via Providence or Chance –

and she slides into a cab­ leaving me

bemused by her epiphany and eager

to contemplate seven storied tapestries.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Everything Good Between Us

I have no ear for singing and seldom land on a black or white. Listen in your head, you say when I change keys five times. I’m scatting, I try. Good luck with that, your reply.

Whoever is in the driver’s seat is incompetent. My gas pedal foot never behaves and my mind strays off the road. You’re writing poems again, you call me back. Where are we going? I ask.

You strut your Nordstrom’s strut through the mall, dismissing a dozen clothing stores by the time I consider one. Quintessence of style, you lamentate my disregard for what I wear.

Everything defaults to me: the glasses you lost somewhere, the key that doesn’t fit, the celery I bought that wasn’t plump enough. Trade-off? You ignore my grumpiness.

 You have to listen faster, you complain when I ask for a repeat. I can’t keep up when you allegro through health, finance, politics, and theology.

The time between a rift and a reconcile grows shorter every year. We slam doors, conjure up a laugh, reconnect to our own happiness. And, ah! there’s always that kiss.

In every grocery store, I turn right, you turn left. I’m the counter-, you’re the –wise. Inevitably, at noon or midnight we meet – you with salty, me with sweet.

When I invite you to talk about death, you reply, I haven’t tried it yet. When I say, Then talk about miracles, you smile, What’s the difference?

When chaos sneaks up and threatens our equanimity, we look it in the eye, grab each other’s hands, and dance to the music of the spheres.

When I run out of things to write, I’ll pose you against a baby grand like Barbra, Liza, or Elaine belting out show tunes to the neighborhood. Everything about you sings a poem.


Ready are you? What know you of ready?

                                                                          – Yoda

If this were my final day on earth, I’d like to think

I’d be sitting at the kitchen table with my coffee mug,

watching the sun scramble through our winded firs,

hoping the squirrels and feral cats would walk

the backyard fence. I’d like to say goodbye.

 

No doubt I’d check the morning news – another night

of death-by-belief, natural and unnatural catastrophes,

sixty-five million souls adrift in un-homelands.

This misery, I’d comfort myself, will ease the letting go.

 

I would hear you open the bedroom door,

walk down the stairs – steady as any day

before – and look at me expectantly.

 

We would sit side-by-side, agreeing

there’s nothing useful in worrying,

nothing helpful in judgment or regret.

I’d memorize the cadence of your voice,

the sharpness of your deep brown eyes.

I’ll know them when we meet again.

 

Just so you understand, I am not afraid.

I’ve been there before. The fact remains

my last day may end tonight or in two dozen years.

For now, there’s nothing more to do than warm

my coffee up, cheer on the squirrels and cats,

and tell you I love who and where we are.

While earth counts up its scars, take my hand.

Let’s watch the sun break free above the firs.

from Thin Places


All I need

A few skyward things: one steady star

to guide, one constellation to bet

a myth upon, one quasar to break

the dark. The rest is ornament.

 

One mountain to announce it’s ripe

for bulbs and seeds to multiply

without a first or second thought.

Birth deserves tranquility.

 

A frenzy of birds at sleeptide’s ebb,

 tornados of gnats at dusk’s flow.

 Two feral cats. Two red-tailed hawks.

  Days that warrant wilding up.

 

A word for grace or luck or hope

when the mountain blocks my star.

In-the-bone love for all that’s lost.

Something born to lead me home.


Salieri, after a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute

at Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden, October, 1791

The cheap seats love the man.

Each night he lures them from slogging streets

into the pomp and pageantry of fairy tales

with music that makes the angels cry.

 

They love the oboes courting flutes, bassoons 

entwined in clarinets; strings outracing

trombones, trumpets, tubas, horns

toward kettledrums shuddering the boards

beneath their feet. They care not for scores

or virtuosity. They want delight—

magic doors, scenes that fly,

finales—and more, und mehr.

 

I hide behind red drapes high

above the crowd, and watch them watch

the note-barrage shooting from his fingertips.

And when the coloratura soars

toward F above high C, I catch them catch

their breath before their “Bravos!”

seize the chandeliers where magic drips

from candle wax. The pulse-throb

of the aria vibrates my skin.

I want to cry. Divinity has voice.

 

But when the curtain falls

the deafening applause unhinges me.

“Encore! Encore!” reminds

this lesser child of God,

he’s fated second-best.

 

Heaven-hurt, I never could compose

so many notes across a page;

never could raise a mundane crowd

above its seats as that little man

with fire in his fingertips.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All Content and Photos Copyright © 2023 Carolyn Martin · Website by The Poetry Box · Powered by Wordpress· Log in
  • Facebook
  • Email