John Martone: A Suite of Poems from Molecular Lament

please note. a list of postings after january 12, 2012 can be found here

Cecilia Vicuña quipu menstrual 2006




thread

bare

for Cecilia Vicuña

               Their books were loose bundles of string.

                                             -- Charles Mann

just

about
done

here

dressed in

rags

~

story

of

yr life

string

all

balled up

~

in

the end

telo

meres

&

spindle –
some

children’s

book

~

all those

cells

di

viding

there

you are


~

want

to ask

those

chromo
somes

               why

~

such a clever
molecule

making you

not so

~

-- all those

hy

drogen

bonds

& you’re

still
lonely?

~

there it

goes
again

that

codon

~

all those cells

dividing

& you never

feel a thing

~

get

ting
too

big

for
your

brit

ches
that

mo

le
cule

~

take

all
those

mo

le
cules

tie

your
shoe

~

still

lost in
that

tangle

of

inter

state

roads

last night’s

dream

a thread

~

some molecules

dream up pictures

that are nothing –

there you go

~

you pick

that knot
apart

& then

what? –
tie it

again?

study
its length

in sun

namely
nothing --

or just

the sun?
                                             -- johnmartone

                              summer 2012

 [note. Both John Martone and Cecilia Vicuña have appeared several times on Poems & Poetics.  With Martone my fullest accounting of his work & achievement as a poet was in the posting of his poem “geometry” on August 18, 2009.  I describe him there as “our greatest living miniaturist,” an appraisal that holds for me into the present time. The new book from which this comes, Molecular Lament, is ready for publication from Martone’s own imprint (samuddo / ocean), along with an on-line version on his scribd page, http://www.scribd.com/john-martone-2968. (J.R.)]