When I Sing Blue
Love me when a memory seizures me
to those acts of violation,
when a long emptiness follows,
the moon in the window cracks and falls
and the spider won’t quit crawling up my spine.
When I become a day moon, love me,
for I am a round thin host placed on the tongue of the sky,
melting into the west.
Love me as I step from Salvation Army-food stamp bower,
section 8 haunted house,
ditch road dusting my feet as I wail-walk the waterways,
looking for my drowned self in reflections of crane-shadow moon.
Love me as a sun-stained flower in glass.
Love me as a painting framed in gold on the floor of a burnt museum.
Love me as a wilderness alight, drought candle opening evergreen seedlings.
As if you are the promise that peeled me back from the edge of a building, as if you are petals of wind, and I,
footsteps of a garden as it dances in your spring dawn.
Ruth Martinez lives in Burque, New Mexico. As a child she listened to rain birds, horses, migratory birds and the stories of the grown-ups in Spanish and English. She has published short essays and poetry in Ofrenda Magazine, LunaLuna, Cordella Press, Poetry As Promised, Witchology Magazine, The Hopper, Black Moon Magazine and Ice Floe Press. She co-wrote an Indie book of poetry, Crow Moon, with her good comadre Anna Griego, and Bottlecap Press published thier chapbook Root Women. In her spare time, she reads poetry and fantasy novels, dabbles in art journaling, strolls through botanic gardens, and hikes in the mountains, where she has encountered cougars on three occasions. She cannot choose a favorite book. She’s a hoarder.
You can follow her on Instagram @blackberrybramblebooks and @veranotaos.