Calgary Martin

Wave III

i –

You still think it will end that way.
As you dreamt it—teeming over
the sea walls to fill the waiting riverbeds
erected however long ago
in concrete, in limestone, and glass.
You still dream it, weekly. Then you daydream
of the land recreating itself and yes, the romance
of a monstrous city, a beautiful city,
transformed by vines and water.

The wind is here already but we do not read
its signs. We do not speak the language,
nor do we feel appropriately afraid. But the violets
in the yard are bending with its force. The nettles
tilt back and forth like a band of bodies intertwined.
Do we know where to find it, to collect it, lay it gently
in the sun, to wait while it dries? And what
then? The nettles sting us
so we run. Our blood
still pines for it. We don’t know to wear gloves,
where to place the scissors, how to make the safest
cuts. When our hearts beat
too fast. When we grow unwanted
children. Do we know how to tend
them, to pass them gently away.

When we were young, in floral dresses,
drinking drinks in trendy bars, holding them up
like pieces of quartz. When we walked
over graves in search of tacos. When we waited
in waiting rooms on Elizabeth Street.
and we slumped over the two-person seat
on the 3 am Q-train. When we danced
on a barge in the East River and starved ourselves
and yelled into phones on the white sands
of Southampton as if this was the only way
to love–it seemed so dire then.

ii– 

Process it. That’s what you do with the herbs
once they’re dried. And pour over alcohol
or vinegar. And place it in the cupboard
and sit still while unable to perceive
that it’s working.

Water also is a menstruum
for imbuing by osmosis; in that regard
think of the river
of sea water
swarming with all of our possessions
all of our enmity and deceit
all of our meet-cutes
all of the baby birds fallen from their nests
all of our shouting on the sidewalk
all of the white tear drops from the callery pairs
all of the blood of the people we ignored
all of the last breaths
all of the colonizing flora
all of the dashed dreams that flew us across prairies to be here 

The water makes a spell with its constituents
Who knows how much more potent it will be
steeped in our blood and our shattered glass
and our oxidized beams
and our wild flowers.

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Calgary Martin is originally from Washington State, but spent her formative years in Brooklyn, NY. Her poems appear in Hayden's Ferry Review, Cimarron Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Nashville Review, The McNeese Review, Tupelo Quarterly and others. She lives in Illinois with her husband and son.