Two Poems by Martin Rock
Lines Written After a Party in New York
It isn’t sarcasm or sadness but the feeling
of having been left to die in the middle
of a rooftop filled with one’s attractive friends.
They look at me and I try to look at them.
My eyes remain fixed on the side of my head.
My tongue is a fist submerged in ice.
I try to make my way back to the surface
to bleat but I cannot. My eyes are glassy
& probing & panicky & beyond
this goat world is another goat world, & beyond
that one a hole large enough to hold all
the goats in history & still be thirsty.
My own goat lips are chapped from dry grass.
My words hang from my face like a root.
Love Poem of a Strawberry Grouper
You’ve sunk a hook
through my heavylewd tongue
and I’m saturated with you
you give me the bends and I like it
my balance my swim bladder
contained in my belly I expand
for poor timing and hunger
you are a feast in the murky dark
your squidwhite thighs your lips
suck with an anemone’s cool yes
you are exploding me with inertia
PSI lifting atmospheres lifting the air
expands against my lungs against
my intestines elasticsweet equilibrium
now the balloon of organskin
consumes me suffocates
my glands my larynx I love you it says
like the dragging to the surface like
tensionwater like light rays
through the dark sea like halation
and breaking surface to the light
I can’t breathe or swim or see white
dilation not even outlines
no pressure but now on my scales
the bizarre sensation of drip
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Martin Rock is the author of Residuum (2015 Editor’s Choice Award, Cleveland State University Poetry Center), as well as two chapbooks: Dear Mark (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013) and Fish, You Bird (Pilot, 2010). With Kevin Prufer and Martha Collins, he co-edited a volume on the work of the poet Catherine Breese Davis. His work appears or is forthcoming in Best American Experimental Writing 2018, Colorado Review, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Conduit, DIAGRAM, Washington Square Review, and other journals. A fellowship recipient from Starworks Foundation, the Port Townsend Writers Conference, InPrint Houston, and the winner of the Donald Barthelme prize in Poetry, Martin holds an MFA from New York University and a PhD from the University of Houston. He is a member of the Poetry Society of America’s Bay Area Advisory Board and serves on the Unsung Masters board.
