Jack Martin
Jack Martin lives in Fort Collins, CO. His poems have appeared in many journals including Ploughshares, Agni, Georgia Review, and Matter; and his poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Ghost Town, North American Review, Wisconsin Review, Rust+Moth, HCE Review, Diagram, and Tupelo Quarterly.
Call Her the Rain
These crackers narrow the distance
between love and cheese.
She left four notes. All of them
written on crackers. Each cracker
placed strategically in the sky.
I call Her the sky. I don’t know
what else to call. Time?
Money? Distance? Cheese.
Is this why so many people believe?
World Without My Mother
I keep saying it: my mother
would have been a good president.
She used to say, We’re all doing
the best we can with what we have.
Dad, the first First Husband,
what would my father
have said to her election?
Would he have thrown his wrench
into the air in celebration?
Would he have said, Yes, dear?
Whatever you say, dear?
She used to say, You’ll be ok;
just keep at it. My father
kept at it. What would he
have said? A man who said
“I do” in 1956? Go ahead. Predict.
It’s not like it’ll ever happen.
Look around. She’s gone.