by Betsy Mitchell Martinez
after Jerry Pallotta
How many tunes can you play with that tired
proboscis? How many times can I
resist the call, dilute your trumpet
with the white noise of the sea? I snuff along
the shallows, churning sand, my whiskers in vibration
with a feast below the floor. The shells
I suction into shards and soft anatomy.
I’d like to teach you industry, to clamp
upon desire and wait until it yields
its twin adductors. Desire, that animal
I haul toward a winter sky, insisting that the body
is a tool. Just look at how my tusks smash ice
and reach from one cold to another. Come
read this by the light of burning blubber.
Betsy Mitchell Martinez holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in New Letters, EPOCH, Washington Square Review, DIAGRAM, Beloit Poetry Journal, cream city review, Indiana Review, Shenandoah, and elsewhere.