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About this Poem 

“This poem explores a Heraclitean idea of love, showing how, in the end, we often miss some of the most mundane things about the person lost, such as a kiss. This poem is an attempt to wiggle my toes in the stream of that kiss.”
David Tomas Martinez

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

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. 

by this poet

poem

I must
          not succeed.

                      Success is the mind-killer.

Success
           is the little-death
           that brings total

obliteration. I will face

                                 my success. I will

permit it to pass

2
poem

1.

It's not water to wine to swallow harm,
though many of us have,

and changing the name
of Ozark Street to Willie Jones Street,
won't resuscitate,

won't expose how the sun roars across rows of faces
at the funeral for a seventeen-year-old-boy,

won't stop the double

collected in

collection
On April 25, 2015, we will be copresenting