How the Streets Cough and Sing
This city!
An open mouth–no–
a chorus of open mouths.
The traffic’s lymph system
runs 24 hours.
It clots in places,
then reopens
to clot again down the
line.
Breath
in, breathe out
sings the chorus to
“Sorry/Grateful.”*
Clench your fists.
Remember your weapons–
carry them where they can be seen
so that all will be warned.
This city!
Jacaranda trees on every
other block,
Star Jasmine growing
through
Scientology’s great wall.
The chorus sings,
Clear your senses and breathe in,
breathe out
gratitude
that you smell sweet Jasmine
over other, less pleasurable smells.
This city!
Fast,
smart,
metallic,
not eternal
but something like it.
Very late at night, in
bed–or very early–
this city laughs and weeps,
snorts and plays charades
in the shadows,
breathes in and out
with accompanying sirens.
Sleep well, it says,
you know there is enough here for all of us.
*Song from the musical
comedy “Company,” by Stephen Sondheim,. Derek A. Bermel & Charles Braswell, 1993
Dreams I Want To Have
A two-story house that
resembles a wedding cake from the outside
Friends the size of jelly
beans who adore me–especially my large feet
Twilights with excessively
short lives
Mafia/ Cosa Nostra, crowded
into limousines–overcoats brushing against each other
An ineluctable dessert, the
taste of which lasts until after I wake up
A trail through trees
leading to a mossy place lit by a bright moon
Dark water filled with
stars, laughter and torches and seafood for all
A kindly ghost who will
reconstruct my future
Elves and Michael the
Archangel dancing on the lawn outside my door
A small house in Scotland
with Mountain Avens and Corn Marigold growing around it
Tiny dun horses who will
lie in my lap, snores sounding like
Anahata Healing Flutes, music above and below me
A bed drowning in pillows–a
blue quilt underneath them
A telegram from a reliable
source to tell me that I will never die
Amen
The Effect Of
Overcast Quiet On Sadie’s Mood
Ah! Sadie, I said.
You are my soul sister in
alienation
so I thought I’d close your
curtains
and turn on all the lights
for you.
We both know what that
mousy grey light
can do to a person. It can
kill someone, Sadie.
Did you know that?
Grey sky makes this city
look dishonoured,
disdainful, lost in
loneliness.
That’s the price for living
here: when it’s barely lit,
Los Angeles seems to be in
her death throes
and, I tell you, Sadie, it
scares me.
Yeah, she said. Both things–grey skies and twilight–
look like they’ve OD’d on chloral hydrate,
they reek of impermanence and indifference.
You’re right to close my drapes. I’d sleep
through dark days, but the muted light
invades my eyes. I see sad shapes and lost time
beneath my eyelids.
Unsafe, don’t you
think–that light that warms no one?
If you could take a foam
mat and a sleeping bag
and stay in a church (with
stained glass windows and incense)
and lie down in a pew
toward the middle, you might be OK,
able to avoid the rawness
of gray, the foil air and solid sky.
The crucified face above
the altar might protect you.
I won’t sleep in a place I don’t attend regularly, said
Sadie.
It seems an unscrupulous thing to do. I’m afraid that the
angels
will not recognize me; they will make inquiries,
will scratch my
face and arms.
Angels can be hard on us mortals. You have to watch angels
every bit as closely as you do demons. They are moody.
Well, I said, that explains
it. It must be eternally overcast in heaven.
That will really fuck with
your mood.
Sadie made a smacking sound
with her lips. Got anything good to eat
at your place? she asked. Do you have fizzy fruit juice and coffee?
Do you have wine and fancy chocolates or lemon meringue
pie?
Let’s go and I’ll see what
I can do, I said. We’ll open the
curtains
and the window and spit
fire into the air to make it remember
when it was beautiful.
Immelmann Maneuver
When I closed the window
last night,
I saw my face–pale and
creased.
I saw my face pleated with
confusion,
desperate gentleness,
fierce hopefulness,
a short distance from my
features
to the ever-flaming city
on the other side of the
window.
I thought At least I am whole.
Outside the window,
a plane executed half a
loop upwards
then a half roll to reverse
its direction.
I am whole, I thought.
I was made so by the earth tones
of my lover’s gaze–
warm and luscious
DREAM/WIND
This morning I woke
from a dream of
watching a soiled wind
scatter bits of
paper and dry weeds
around my house.
I didn’t want to see
this, you know,
but dreams have a way
of governing
themselves. In this
dream, I watched for a
letting up, a drop in
wind strength that
would allow me to walk
through it–brave,
unsullied–even better,
untouched.
I wanted an accomplice
to watch
with me, one to say
1-2-3 GO!
and then I’d run
through that angry air,
into my house, through
the kitchen, straight
to my desk, leave that
wind to itself
and to its shadows. I
woke before
anything like that
happened. I woke
to morning’s faint
yellow aureole.
My hands were tired of
being clenched,
I saw no evidence of
new or
old miracles in the
air.
I felt the smallness
of the room, saw
the clutter on my
desk, my sweater,
a dark heap on the
back of the chair.
Everywhere I looked,
it was morning.
Martina
Reisz Newberry is the author of 7 books of poetry. Her most recent book is
Glyphs, available now from Deerbrook Editions. She is
also the author of Blues for French
Roast with Chicory, available from
Deerbrook Editions, the author of Never
Completely Awake ( from Deerbrook
Editions), Where It Goes (Deerbrook
Editions), Learning by Rote
(Deerbrook Editions), Running Like a
Woman with Her Hair on Fire (Red Hen
Press), and Take the Long Way Home
(Unsolicited Press).
Newberry
has been included in The Cenacle,
Cog, Blue Nib, Braided Way, Roanoak Review, THAT Literary Review, Mortar
Magazine, and many other literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. Her work is
included in the anthologies Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Moontide Press
Horror Anthology, A Decade of Sundays: L.A.'s Second Sunday Poetry
Series-The First Ten Years and many others.
She
has been awarded residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for
the Arts, and Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts.
Passionate
in her love for Los Angeles, Martina currently lives there with her husband,
Brian, a Media Creative. Her city often is a “player” in her poems.
