Now she is lost. She was always alone.
Lampshades ask the street for her, quietly.
No directory lists her address or phone.
She would like the way the flowers have blown
around this year. She loved flowers slightly.
Now she is lost. She was always alone.
Now she's incognito, somewhere unknown;
and her lovers ask for her stupidly.
No directory lists her address or phone.
What drummer did she dance to? What trombone
played the Dachau tango so hauntingly?
Now she is lost. She was always alone.
She rang the Nazis with her dial tone;
sang for gas like a Jew--elegantly.
No directory lists her address or phone.
She sang the undertaker, sang the stone.
In grass she wrote her zip code, dreamily.
Now she is lost. She was always alone.
No directory lists her address or phone.
Copyright © Ramón E. Martínez, 1999, 2009. All Rights Reserved.
Ramón E. Martínez
Ramón E. Martínez grew up in New Mexico and Arizona. Poems from his full-length collection, The Receipt of Fern Seed have appeared in: A Poetry Mag, American Poetry Review, Balcones, Bilingual Review, Black Warrior Review, Cape Rock, Century, Contact II, Croton Review, Gila Review, Glens Falls Review, Graham House Review, The Greenfield Review, Inlet, Inscape, Panoply, Rio Grande Writer's Newsletter, Riversedge, Víaztlan, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. He is currently seeking a publisher for The Receipt of Fern Seed.
View all articles by Ramón E. Martínez