Naked news is what I'm after,
news as explosive and hard
as a metal pipebomb.
That's why I've come to drug rehab,
where Clarice rises from her chair
and speaks to me of lost loves,
lost chances

In our first issue, Maverick Magazine features the poetry of Ramón E. Martínez, who 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.

Robert's new grill is on the motor rotisserie,
the juices of a chicken seeping, gathering, then plummeting
to the silver foil catch pan over the coals. Every Saturday morning
there is someone out there with a power mower, even in this little
        neighborhood

Repetition is a form of change. Change is a form of life. Life is a form of repetition. And the message becomes the vestige of continuous change. The dance is the same. A form of repetition. Each memory exhausted as soon as it occurs, and all we have are traces, texts, that accumulate upon the waters -- they do not stop. The idea of presence persists, but suddenly it is mere absence.

Her mind a jumble of brides
And bridges, a bird as green
As her cheek, flush with moonlight.

We began in the scarlet burn
With fire's tortured logic
Sucking water from our bones.

It was the dark black smoke of la grifa
that killed Nevarez one night in April
sitting in bed, hands on the only woman
who ever loved him.

Where will all the music go if you bomb us?
Do the fashion magazines lie?
I hate to be serious, North Korea.

But there are stations playing all night here
and sometimes the disc jockeys spin
old dreams of love
almost no one knows, awkward frequencies
announcing us to the stars.

The light of Tokyo, that halo
cradling the edge of space, jars
even the heavens. By midnight
Stephen’s ghost falls.

The rain makers are orange and yellow, drums
Drawn with human skin
And a bone trumpet piercing everything--
These second growths
Of color above the high mustard fields of the peninsula.
A cold air in banners crying to the turquoise sky.