Two Poems by Raul Martinez

The Form of Your Body is Meat to Me

There is danger while you walk you say.
Out on the streets
There is broken glass like shark’s teeth.
It is in your blood,
No worse,
It is in your thoughts of strewn razor blades.
And no lover
Can subdue it
With words that descend
Like falling petals—
They are the remains
Of dead and dying flowers
You say.
           
When you talk like this,
I hate that I will weaken,
Grow old and die into some ditch.
I hate myself for being a man.

Were I a beast
I would rip the bowels
Of your enemies
And present to you
Their carcasses
To feed on.

But I am not a beast.
           
Were I a god
I would sacrifice myself
And from my burning smoke
Reform as surging clouds
To rain immortality
And the pleasure of muddy feet
Upon you.

But I am not a god.
I am only an aegis of shadow and flesh and deterioration
And always, only, your reverberation
Of broken glass—scattered sparks on the earth.

Quemasiyes

She crawls,
Crouches at the door.
Her nose reels at the waft of polished gold inside.
Tongue drools and spittles, forms dots
In the brown earth.
Brown earth caresses her with silky silt;
Digs rocks into her red palms.
She hears heartbeats or drumbeats
Building outside.
Within,

Brassy flutes and horns.
Doorway cracked open.
Edges lined with nimbus of light.
Bright face, chest, arms, and hands.
Light surrounds her
With the scent of an orange field.
Lillith reborn, Eden restored.
Inside the horns and flutes collapse walls.
Collapse precedes expansion.

Flayed skin taut around a building drum.
Hija de la chingada.
Legitimate bastard of rape.
The hummingbird that kills,
Boring out eyes,
Seeing inside.
Every tree touched
Becomes ogre or avatar.
Who is she that dares,
Who is she that scares?
QUE-MA, SÍ, YES.

She who will challenge the old ways.
The conscientious destroyer,
Gifting the world to the world.
Que-ma, Sí, Yes,
Quemasíyes.
And the skies will part the way,
And the trees will part the way,
And the rocks will part the way,
And the waters will part the way,
For my twin sister.

Raul Martinez