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National Poetry Month: J. Michael Martinez

By Glynn Young 1 Comment

J. Michael Martinez is a young poet but already one with impressive credentials. A graduate of Northern Colorado University (B.A.) and George Mason University (M.F.A.), his poems have appeared in New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, The Colorado Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. He received the 2006 Five Fingers Review Poetry Prize and his collection Heredities: Poems received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. He is currently studying for his Ph.D. in literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder. You can find his web site and blog here.

This poem is from Heredities (2010).

The Lady of Guadalupe’s Dream and Jade Ruin

And she said: Does darkness list our erasures and become beautiful?

And she said: This I love, I translate into advent and wild foxgrape,
                the blind staggers of water.

And then she said: The dead will return, narrow gates unlatched.

To which she replied: His body is air written between my hands.

Which is when she carved an arrow upon linden, leaf & chaff.

Which is when the butterflies hatched from her footprint.

Which was how she cut her fingers with seaweed and bitter jewel.

Which was when our martye became the hour of unsung reeds.

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Glynn Young
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Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
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Comments

  1. Maureen Doallas says

    April 7, 2011 at 2:01 pm

    I have this collection. I find I have to read it slowly, and not straight-through. It can be enormously rewarding.

    Reply

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