Arsenic Lobster poetry journal        Issue Six   2004
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Looking Into the Laugh
Jack Martin

It should be enough to get down on hands and knees, dip head, extend neck, peer squint-eyed into one of the slots of an electric socket and not see the electricity. Trust has requirements. It should be enough to know that this is a place where a screwdriver blade will fit. It should be enough to watch clouds bloody themselves against the sun’s razors. It should be enough to sit by a fire turning bacon until it crisps, enough to lift it dripping on to a blue plate covered with a white towel. It should be enough to lift, look him in the laugh as he extends almost three-year-old hands, plants each palm on one of my cheeks and pushes my head from side to side. Forget about birth. Forget about death. It should be enough to stand, mouth open, looking into wind and snow. It should be enough to study a closed fist. It should be enough to stand near the rib cage of a mountain goat resting in a circle of flattened grass above Hell’s Half Mile, bones licked clean. It should be enough to know the lion’s mouth exists. But some of us long to be lifted by the invisible, thrown against a wall, hair standing, to see with different eyes.

About Jack Martin

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