Uncertainty Unsonnet
Say, you find yourself disappearing—
you can see right through your hand,
translucent as strudel dough grandma
stretched across the kitchen table until
she could read The Forward through it.
Though finding isn’t what it’s all about,
is it? Maybe you’re mislaid—put down
half a minute when your phone rang,
while the sauce was simmering. You no
longer know what is given. Now you go
with the flow. Particle and wave do-si-do,
having moved about since last you
saw them. So will you cease to breathe,
transcend, or just become unpredictable?
Lines for a Daughter
a woman bleeds in water
where sharks swim
nature is not
a mother
what is desire
if not hunger?
take what you need
to make rain
from a cloudless sky
Diane K. Martin’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Field, Kenyon Review, Tin House, Plume, and many other journals. Her work has been included in Best New Poets, received a Pushcart Special Mention, and won the 2009 poetry prize from Smartish Pace. Her first collection, Conjugated Visits, was a National Poetry Series finalist and was published in 2010 by Dream Horse Press. Her second book Hue & Cry will be published by MadHat Press in September, 2019. She lives in western Sonoma County, California, where she teaches Grammar, Mechanics, and Usage for Editors for UC Berkeley Extension online.