Poem of the Week: David Tomas Martinez

   

 

1.

(from the poem "Forgetting Willie James Jones")

It's not water to wine to swallow harm,

though many of us have,

and changing the name

of Ozark Street to Willie Jones Street,

won't resuscitate,

won't expose how the sun roars across rows of faces

at the funeral for a seventeen-year-old-boy,

won't stop the double slapping

of the screen door against a frame,

causing a grandmother, by habit, to yell out, Willie.

It can't deafen the trophies in a dead teenager's room.

That day in '94 I felt strong.

I walked down the street with nickel bags of weed

in the belt loops of my Dickies,

and a bandana strung from my pocket.

That's when I thought trouble could be run from,

could be avoided by never sitting

with your back to the door

or near a window.

I swore by long days and strutted along a rusted past,

shook dice and smoked with the boys

that posted on the corners:

and men cruising in coupes, men built so big

they took up both seats,

I rode with them that summer.

That was the season death walked alongside us all,

wagging its haunches and twisting its collared neck

at a bird glittering along a branch.

Willie was shot in that heat,

with a stolen pistol,

in the front yard of a party.

It poked a hole

no bigger than a pebble

in his body.

The shooters came from my high school:

we sometimes smoked in the bungalow

bathrooms during lunch.

A few weeks before Willie got shot,

Maurice had been killed--

An awning after rain,

Maurice and Willie

sagged from the weight.

Some say it is better

to be carried by six

than judged by twelve.

Some say the summer of '94

in Southeast San Diego

was just another summer.

-David Tomas Martinez

Used by permission.

From Hustle (Sarabande Books, 2014)

David Tomas Martinez's work has been published or is forthcoming in Forklift, Ohio, Poetry International, Gulf Coast, Drunken Boat, RHINO, Ampersand, Caldera Review, Verse Junkies, California Journal of Poetics, Toe Good, and others. Martinez has been featured or written about in Poets & Writers, Houstonia Magazine, Houston Art & Culture, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express News, Border Voices, Buzzfeed, and NBC Latino. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Houston's Creative Writing program, with an emphasis in Poetry. Martinez is also the Reviews and Interviews Editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and a CantoMundo Fellow. His debut collection of poetry, Hustle, will be released May 13, 2014 by Sarabande Books.

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