22.6.25

Two Poems by Joshua Martin

Dry and Simultaneously Entombed in Gnawed Saltwater
 
Haven blast microbe punctuation marks watching
magnifying glass pencil sharpener butterflies
that elongated a horizon shaded like a hollowed
out stigmata pore. Clothespin oceans? Any
condensation in an early morning blooming as
incongruous as an initiation. Invitation to a tail-
spin beheading cockroach ceiling. Fingers span
the anorexic marble library nostalgia grottoes.
A gutter. Sensational gothic pebbles and shells
beyond expectation entities.
 
Wired, insecure, a storage shelter parking ticket
offering a blushing circular obsession to an over-
zealous toothache conference. Are there
walls kissing our cocoon landscapes? Hoof? A
ruined map. A kangaroo wandering the implanted
countryside seeking plasticine funhouse typos. A
dinosaur toxin. A latent ceremonial slug unexpect-
edly disenchanted. Dusty guile and forlorn states
of vegetative shrinking. A lost corner. A beatnik
cufflink superstition.
 
Specialized roundabouts smell like formal
soft drinks. Blurry apartment attractions
frequently marginal. Planets full of lint
and liver and implicit amoral synchronicity.
 
Above. Dressed to appeal to the grandeur of an
unfortunate examination. Frustration grasshopper
puzzle box resembling a clarinet tissue. Hokum.
Arrows bend and retreat and germinate.
Immunized candy duels. Wizened in the
geometric binocular civilization reduction.
Bland classicism. According to the factory
permutation theory all wilderness spectacles
culminate in conspiracy theories.
 
Exploration oddities. Dime factors of straining
consumerism. We are an implosion awaiting
clasping nourishment. Existence as a stroll.
Numbered insincerity constellation. Magnetic
hark. Bellowing hallucination. Our membranes
thirst. Our tangled eyelashes coming apart at
the pedestals. Tongue roots teetering. Arachnid
erasure. A tasteless perfume colliding with
dissenting rainforest missionaries. Among
burials. Caskets for days. The dawn of all
our horseshoe grotesqueries.
 
A voice, like an orgasm, displayed beneath
a subtle Orwellian boardgame. Lopsided
miracles exempt from stuffy academic cliffs.
Jagged and rustling and evading our context.
Like a fossil of thoughtless exposition. With-
out swearing allegiance to a literary depart-
ment store. Our catalogues of sleeping.
 

Slant Tones Encased in Banging Plaques
 
Fungus tips softy excavated enumeration
blocks of happenstance laboratory tumors
sturdy and justifiably deserted though quartz-
like in balmy bred historic strangulation
vacuums. An accountant strains finely
edged comatose arrogance while a mirroring
stammer punished charmed semblances of
cockroach buckets. Adroit, an adverse fusion
of linguistic unit structures scrawling acidic
teeth aftershocks. Scrub, nascent fields of
meditative garage syndromes. Inlet, an
eyebrow manifesto gorge? Circled in a rib
of meadow provocation volumes.
 
Lone and chomping fields. Demonic soap
opera shields whining Geraldine Chaplin
chilled spine retreats. What, another line of
callus avoidances? Might repeat leaning
allowance herbs stuck yet dancing fandangos
in concerning velvet downpours. Or curtsey
handshakes. At noon, the butter sculpture
scapegoat renders personification self-evident
as in a piano on stilts being dragged through
crystalized bathhouses. It might wither as
in a Thursday.
 
Which that said a thunderous northwest
itch bared and bloody stalking raging
obstructions? Well, turned, loaned a
cape on a holiday barricade lump shed.
Pebbles arguing fragments la dolce vita
campground tactile fingerprints.
 
All heave and little shrieking mentions,
vastly the nape of jingle bell neck tattoo
dice. Tiny gasoline engulfed echoing
appliances superseding craggy melons
of virtuous monopoly vanilla. Kinky robes
pet limbless beet assemblage. To a vertical
flute. Toward reduced liver painting. It
has a point. It has an invisible kernel twirl.
Let if throb or present padlock trails to
Kika Markham turquoise moonbeams
straddling tadpole violins. Unjust. Withheld.
An apparent fudge lurking keyhole.
 
Mightn’t the farthest spraining proverb
offer dialectical shrimp to distracted twins
blindingly pointillistic in stamina? Present
the lotion to the gopher sentence. Tanta-
mount to matted weather lungs humping
James Whale observation desks. Pome-
ranian jean shorts stoop to define declining
cultural mumbling. Pardon the glowing whis-
key clavicle mermaid intelligentsia. Rodent
to the stars. If found, return to sugar free
immaculate hand lotion station. A certain
rocking division might contain a flicker of
laundry turntables.
 
Sniff. Sniff. Beyond an egg, a sludgy and
formulaic tendency filling heated seat
silicon rodent debacle. Desk has hopped
and forgotten the rattling tug-of-war at the
heart of potato tempered fibers. Disappear-
ed fractions. The case of the hunted parallel
slaughterer of ping pong yardsticks. Dresser
drawer, a lacking. The damned fishing pole
utters calibrator armistice. A jealous seal
off to the races. In the slowly gesturing
midsection, questions link Jacques Rivette
durational light sockets to blurred clumps
of atmospheric spoons. Sing, whiplash unto
disposable improvisations. Cloaked in degre-
es of repellent garbage disposal wires.
 
Still and wherein, bloody signification gloom
tied to the ersatz doorknob jubilee headset
speaking toward a sandwich habit. Bad or
simply the birth of a defect?