“Food” on a yellow balloon “Accommodation” on a pink balloon “Freedom” on a blue balloon “Language” on a green balloon “Education” on an orange balloon Set them free, please tell the world the needs we are asking for now will be paid back after we grow up. We came here through overloaded boats, which almost turned over during storms. We were told it was our temporary stay, we will be brought to another place of peace and safety, where we “might” unite with our parents. We are …
Pretending
1 Every day we carry a creeping calamity on our shoulders. Every day the burden becomes harder to bear, more difficult to ignore, but we are well-versed in pretending. We choose not to look at the poisoned, swelling oceans, at the gathering clouds above, because these are problems for others. When decline falls across our sunlit path, we squint and stumble, curse our tired feet and broken footing, lay blame everywhere else. Surely the wretched animals did this to us somehow—ungrateful! And …
Girlfriend as DiVine, from Disney World
Steaming in the central Florida shade,the morning rays gleam off her plasticleaves. I find her camouflagedagainst another tree: her sun-broadcasting doppelgangerperched only a foot above her crown. She ducks,striding below the baser branches, stiltsbeneath that cedarn cover,manifesting grace, her face painted the greens of Eveand Harlequins: this walking jungle,bountiful with rubber grapes and silkworm fronds,an artificial mulberry, post-Earth. The kids are gone for now: there is a …
Barbershop
As the barber snipped and combed, lathered and groomed, I lapsed into a kind of understanding with the universe. There in his chrome-and-leather swivel chair as his small talk raged in my ears I counted each hair as it fell, a hirsute mail on my chest. The mirrors, berserk with light, redoubled the room. A twitch in time, you might say. Epiphany. I’ve heard it can happen that way. Marc Alan Di Martino is the author of two collections, Still Life with City (2022) and Unburial (2019). …
The Green Light
To mix a cocktail is to tell a story. Each bottle you pour from has a history, some mundane and some grandiose. And when you combine each ingredient, whether to create a classic of the trade or something new, the finished product inherently takes on life. Narrative. The Manhattan, for example. The first time that a bartender plucked the whiskey and the sweet vermouth and the bitters from their shelf, stirred the ingredients over ice, and strained the dull red concoction into a coupe, they …
“I think sometimes I am not woman, but…”
incubator, talking point, someone’s mother, sister, daughter, girlfriend—at least I could be. Sometimes the closet, and by that, I mean the hanger. Sometimes both the case & the point, asking for it, a burden, a dowry, a score to be settled, a martyr. The hunger & its clarity. Always, the target for the devil’s advocate. Sometimes, feminine divine—both Kali, the killer & Persephone, raped then killed. Sometimes the oppressor herself, white feminism with all its allegiance to …