James Belflower, Anne Heide, & J. Michael Martinez


from THE CARE WITH WHICH THERE IS


……………………………Michigan (from a suburb; midday, most shadows barely tilt)


one fact of lombardy poplars
                              outside a hidden strangler
                                              a father

traveler all dressed in body
               acceded

                              shriek damp
                              & unredeemable


twin me or king me

my traveler mined           in hip-slid mud

where the sky is a surface        less-
ness in midst of delivery hands-shine

say if a mattress
               made yes, will I
               ever make, no

and does a twinning make matter
filled with possible brothers glued apart

                              in these woods
                              bending commas?







but, but,
arborescent, my home-house
                                              a fatherfilled with possible

                              purrings: when they become copse

factual as I’ll attempt not to be
I’ll and sibling and tree

               profiled in rain scalpel

my home-house and when they come calling
               to father

               I
                              unnoun their winters

               how is it, twin, we’re

different            tangled to another stranger

naked as a string in sound-                     less-
ness




……………………………Michigan (driving through; afternoon, probably near 3 p.m.)


see/saw my brother I
’m made to fix
with him, fact of the matter lax

mattress posed. entangled unwed wet.

under his stomach-reach,
wrench my hand into his belly,


twin.

how is it my curls curve and yours                   arrive

periodically



James Belflower's work appears or is forthcoming in: Jacket, 580 Split, EOAGH, LIT, First Intensity, Abovo, and Cricket Online Review, among others. And Also a Fountain, a collaborative chapbook with Anne Heide and J. Michael Martinez, is forthcoming from NeOPepper Press. He was a finalist for the 2008 Sawtooth Poetry Prize and the National Poetry Series Competition, a 2007 Pushcart nominee and winner of the 2007 Juked Magazine poetry prize. He runs PotLatchPoetry.org, a site dedicated to the free exchange of poetry books, journals, chapbooks and ephemera.

Anne Heide is the author of a forthcoming book of poems, Echo Robin (Tarpaulin Sky Press) and two chapbooks, Specimen,Specimens (Etherdome), and Residuum::Against (Woodland Editions). Her work has appeared in various journals including New American Writing, Notre Dame Review, New Orleans Review, and Court Green, among others.

J. Michael Martinez lectures at the University of Northern Colorado. His poems and reviews have appeared in New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, The Colorado Review, Xantippe and others. He was winner of the 2006 Five Fingers Review Poetry Prize. He has also been runner-up for the 2008 Walt Whitman Award and a finalist for the 2008 Colorado Prize, amongst other finalist positions. He is co-editor of Breach Press and has poems forthcoming in the anthology Junta: Avant-Garde Latino/a Writing.

 
 
 
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