DOUGLAS A. MARTIN
Day I Didn’t Need the Phone to Get Laid
His, “What’s up,”
and my, “Hey,”
in the silent morning walk by
whether or not the wave
was a sexual cue
I still take it
true
I hear “dude”
interpolated as insult
Penny Red Rose Lane
by my crunching on the leaves
the dog who can’t see
can follow me
how many inches of this
white looking for something
green to smell
old dog pants
in winter sun
bring her her water bowl
minimalist subway ads
something to read
too cold to walk the blocks
storm moves through the night sky
—fluid through the
dog’s ailing heart cough
plastic flower
where the dog pees
now that the snow has melted
sometimes she trusts the world around
enough to forward walk more
steps blind
like planted, uninflated
balloons the tulip
blooms: white, yellow, purp.
bed heat of your leg
the dog’s head on my shoulder
hear the heart beating
she stares back
with her blind eyes,
my dog the seer
while the dog sniffs and pees
I weed
yellow dandelion
dogs bound after words
as birds chorus above
weather shadows wavering
the dog’s bark annoys
because your inner thought
wants to sound out elsewhere
the dog hunts pee place
woodpecker drills for the grub
Evergreen, ground frost
on the way to vet hold
the dog like mom held
me after hospital
“What’s going on?” they ask
in the vet waiting room
“She’s dead,” man says.
our dog barks in pain
5:30 am
a poem in breath
you and me and our dog
third week of vet visits
three deer cross the road
in the dark
I find my blind dog
‘s paw
the tea kettle whistle
golden lamp light
dog needs vet again
the dog on guard
against my own bad dreams
lost in the dark
my dog’s racing heart
my aching head
her bed in my bed
blue light she draws air
death rattles morning after
the winter solstice
condolence chimes
coming through
we take a pre-snow storm drive
warmed up car leaving
waterbowl rattles in trunk
her empty pet bed
The Forest for the Fringe
In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself within a dark wood
Dante
marriage season over
in an actor’s fall sublet
lights on next door
the place next door
they got
the summer after the one
me and mine had—
since we had missed our chance,
he said,
to get something ever in the city
(NYC)
and we were turning forty.
and here
came our next decade…
the husband coming out
again (neighbor first gay
then trans man
then,
last night
at a dinner party, it seems
something third and unspoken
where I already said too much
about Orville Peck, his covered-up face
a kind of curtain up above
a torso I blush
another glass of red, edibles.
(here is a picture of a
couple that once went both as Stevie
(dinner with a splitting couple
on the eve of another wedding
departure
earlier my dog chewing her stick in the yard
birds being birds, the lawnmowers going
With works spanning fiction and nonfiction, poetry and prose, Douglas A. Martin has published ten books, including Outline of My Lover, named an International Book of the Year in The Times Literary Supplement and adapted in part for the multimedia live film ballet, Kammer/Kammer. Douglas's most recent title, Wolf, creates narrative meditation around a sensationalized case of patricide and has been called “an anti true crime novel.” They teach at Wesleyan University and help direct Creative Writing there on campus.