LI’L SWEETIE
Mon pauvre petit choux
under the new moon
the cabbage worm
nibbles your ears
Mon petit choux
under the new moon
the black earth
blankets your roots
Earwigs huddle
in the folds
of your crisp skin.
Pollen dust
germinates in your
inflorescence.
I am in love
with your moist
unfolding
the hush
of your nodding
unsung
cruciferous heart.
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JESUS IN PARIS
Look, it was three days since she’d talked
to anyone, three days of fever and sleep,
sheets wet with sweat, though the January
wind banged the casements, with their cross-
hatched mullions, open and shut. She could
almost feel someone in the room next to her,
though the concierge sat six floors below,
arms folded, on guard against anyone
who spoke English, and the most recent
in a long line of flatmates was in Brussels
at a conference for young Christians. But
the Bible the friend left on her bedside table
said Jesus would take her by the hand
if she believed in Him. Three days into that
flu, the girl picked up the Book, read chapter
and verse full of thunder and faith,
acquiescence and begetting, sank lower.
Her bones and eyeballs ached. She knew,
yea, she was dying! She said then — aloud
so He could hear — that she believed. Oh how
she wanted to, slept and woke to the Cross,
stark and indisputable on the plaster wall,
wept and slept, fever subsiding, curtains limp
and docile, moonlight dissipated by morning.
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MAGPIE BEAUTY
Even this shiny bit
taken and repurposed,
spark stowed and pocketed
to be readily at hand
to be caressed and admired
to have and to keep
in the recesses and crevasses,
privacies and interstices
to husband and to hold
now especially
when days are short
the path unspooled
longer than the one
wound up
and the blue moon owns
the pearly hours —
you want
its glow
you need
its glory
you require
its radiance
it’s them
or for god’s sake you
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DIANE KIRSTEN MARTIN‘s work has appeared in Field, Poetry Daily, Zyzzyva, Harvard Review, Narrative, Plume, Rhino, and many other journals and anthologies. She was included in Best New Poets 2005, has received a Pushcart Special Mention, and won the Erskine J. Poetry Prize from Smartish Pace. Her poetry collection, Conjugated Visits, a National Poetry Series finalist, was published in May 2010 by Dream Horse Press. Her newest manuscript, Hue and Cry, is seeking a publisher.
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