A honey badger’s skin can
withstand multiple blows
from machetes, arrows,
and spears, but these rusted
weapons haven’t killed
anything in years, so that may
be the lesson there, that
there is no there there, like
many poems, like many
revolutions, and maybe there
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occasions
A Kiss
And sometimes it is
loss
that we lose,
and sometimes
it is just lips. When I was
a child, I would ask my mother
to tuck me
in, wrap me tight in blankets,
make me into a burrito.
Sometimes I would wait in bed,
pressing my body stiff, like a board,
mind like a feather, silly— setting the scene
to be seen.
So I could be wrapped.
So I could be kissed.
And what
I miss most,
is being made again.
Copyright © 2015 by David Tomas Martinez . Used with permission of the author.
Copyright © 2015 by David Tomas Martinez . Used with permission of the author.

David Tomas Martinez
David Tomas Martinez is the author of Hustle (Sarabande Books, 2014) and the forthcoming Crosshatched (Sarabande Books, 2016). He is finishing his PhD in poetry at the University of Houston. Martinez lives in Brooklyn, New York.
