The American middle class...

Dawn Lundy Martin

The American middle class is screwed again but they don’t know it. Politics is a gleaming nowhere. Žižek fantasizes about Capitalism’s inevitable end. Reviewers want these poems to be more hopeful. Love is obvious. She’s a tutu shelter leaning out! Love is miraculous. She’s twirling quite naturally! We dangle our feet in a July swimming pool. Shoots sparkles from our eyes—to quiet to quiet all our little monsters. Street habits rear up. Any fire. Any quell. Who’s made it to well being? The television projects hysterical grief. Brown women wailing fall to knees draped over. We are only who we are supposed to be. No moon tonight, dear one.

From “The Laceration”

As if the tender body is. As if the will is tender

And like any creature that has its hood up, you

take a photo of yourself in front of a window, rain

so dark, the day/perspective so desired. You are so

desperate for beautiful adventure, the lights shut off

and the sweat of some hot stranger in your mouth. As if

Dawn Lundy Martin

2021

From “Perspective is Supposed to Yield Clarity”

She said, I wish I prayed, I would pray for you. And,

we all wanted a shape of prayer in our brains, taking over

instead of it chomping on itself. Stupid little elf. God has

never come to me. We surrender in the teeming utterance

of materials soaked with sentences already made in air

and by machines. The country says Freedom, crushed under

Dawn Lundy Martin

2020

Nothingness

I don’t want to say anything. What is it to be saying? Force speech, rape speech. I have no subjectivity or light subjectivity. Speaking, defunct. Land mass floats. And the forests have been felled. And the antlers, snapped. Morphed lips, already sewn. Most of us are keen to mouth the word, “beast.” Everyone is talking talking talking like dentures, clack clack, but nothing is really said. Or so much chatter static. I am not saying anything either, am waiting and breathing. My body is speaking. Expressing the thingness of the thing. It chats at me, motoring.

Dawn Lundy Martin

2019

Poems

The American middle class...

More by this poet

From “The Laceration”

From “Perspective is Supposed to Yield Clarity”

Nothingness

Poems

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The American middle class...

More by this poet

From “The Laceration”

From “Perspective is Supposed to Yield Clarity”

Nothingness

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