The Literary Review
Narcissus on the Phone
“Who IS this?”
Narcissus
finally asks,
after doodling
his name six
different ways
on the reflective
face of an iPad,
belly-down
on his bed,
legs bent back
at the knees,
ankles crossed,
deciding he likes
best the one
linked in a rain-
bow chain
of tiny hearts.
A voice opens
like a seed
inside his head,
says with some
urgency, “It’s ME!”
- John Martino
Some Mornings
I see you in a jar
of wild mountain honey
atop the kitchen table
trapping the first amber
light at dawn. Fossilized
stare. The past rushing
past until something
sticks in the mind.
A frieze. A frown.
A furrowed brow.
A tarnished silver
tea spoon twinkling
next to the cup your
lips would sip from.
Nearly invisible red
trace on the chipped
white rim. Your absence
is never really gone.
It leaves a space not
even nothing can fill.
- John Martino
The Personal Is Political
Imagine fun. No, really,
I mean FUN! Each brain
cell laughing, slapping time
to a different prolegomenon.
In the beginning was THE
and in the beginning THE was
and the beginning was in THE
as THE was in the beginning.
“That is all ye need to know!”
cries the showboat at the show.
A riddle solved in reverse,
recut and cast as a curse.
Gun Flow Lying to THE People!
Black hand crying becoming
norm. With Heartbeat dying
to watch. It’s all kept warm
on a petri dish for continuous
calibration, mad modification.
Get it juuust Goldilocks right
and Bam! *Instant Karmafication*
Gonna shake the walls and
rattle the halls of this here
Lego Nation! Every day’s
a Celebration! And you’re
not invited. The Committee
decided. It’s all been divided.
A sick red mind invented race,
that never ending finish line.
- John Martino
Smoking Gun
On earth in abundance
is all that we’re good for.
You can remove all the statues
but not what they stood for.
One more indignation swept
under the sod. Boil the child
and spare the gastropod.
How do you like my broad,
muscular, lubricated foot
now? Twelve inches if it’s two.
And check out this chitinous
spiral bada-bing! shell
—almost see-through!
Watch me distract you
with abject explicitness.
Watch me vibrate and flagellate,
amputate and swell.
These Proverbs can go to Hell!
The cut worm wriggles in two.
Poor worm, fuck you! The plow
digs the Earth; it drinks my whine
and keeps on plowing. In the name
of Artificial Intelligent Design:
Mark Zuckerberg, give us a sign
—a thumbs up, a virtual howl,
anything to justify this perpetual
bowing. “Violence begets violence!”
Christ snaps! me with a towel.
I respond with the sound of silence,
stitch of cross hairs on his brow.
How now scared cow? Heaven
is for tyrants. I hereby disavow
that celestial alliance, and crusade
instead for this Robo-Maid
as a miraculous appliance.
It sure as heck beats self-reliance.
You can tweak her tweeters
without defiance. Or if she hollers,
reroute her for compliance.
Easy as creation science!
Tough as snails. First-time caller
piping twice-told tales.
So let us go then you and I,
a moonwalk lit under camera eye.
Let us resign ourselves
to the auguries of Fate:
And in the end, the shit you take
is equal to the shit you make.
My lizard brain is squirming like a toad.
“Take Abecedarian Road,”
they say, “and go straight, straight, straight!”
But I divagate.
- John Martino
Slouching in Bethlehem
How many times must a man fall down
before you call him a drunk?
The forehead drips: plink, plank,
plunk. I think, I thank, I thunk.
Every newborn bears a crown.
I am not what I am. Poet is Punk.
Getting deep in the shallow end
of the pool. Choices wake us and
we drown. “Your sister called, something
about your mother’s poodle needing braces.”
I float supine. Watch the sun unspool.
A life measured out in molecules.
Mouthfuls of empty air. The spaces
between faces. Like gaps between teeth.
Nothing left to do but not care. Asses
to asses, bust to bust. Show you a sneer
in a handful of lust. Joan Didion died
today. Or maybe it was last year.
- John Martino
