Chris Martin is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Becoming Weather (Coffee House Press 2011) and American Music (Copper Canyon Press 2007). In 2010 he was recognized as one of the Poetry Society of America's biannual New American Poets. His most recent work can be found in notnostrums, Brooklyn Review, Sink Review, Try, Critical Quarterly, VLAK, and in the handsome chapbook How to Write a Mistake-ist Poem (Brave Men Press 2011).

Purchase his books here; check out this video reading on Huffington Post; read a poem from his manuscript-in-progress, Hymns, here; and check out what happened at the explosive book party for Becoming Weather here.

from Disequilibrium

1

Not that what

is is

not actual, these odd
bodies garbed in the accident

of space or, fantastic
autopsies, throbbing

as the moon is silent when you’re not
looking at the beach

We, who may
fight as bravely for slavery
as for safety, the sun

crashing between train
cars like a drug
firing in the brain

And as that girl there
somnambulantly
drags a cord of hair

so it no

longer curtains her
shyly evading

eyes, elsewhere
a soldier steps across
the leaking resemblance of

a torso and a course

is determined to prolong

such images

from The Small Dance

1

Societies of superfluity
require doses                           of the end

                of the world

It was Wednesday morning
we were exploring

            a poetry of a dancer to dance a haircut
so it is already happening—one takes
                        the first step in a dance away

from transcendence and is now
an infinite

                                    distance removed

from This False Peace

There is such action here        the yard we can’t decide         is front or back           

black fly chasing         my breath                    sister tentative           

on the harmonica         The leaves dip and twist                     frantically modern                  

though their shadows show                them up           as bees are                   likewise

out-buzzed by hummingbirds             and wrens fill in          and neither

of us feels the least bit            ironic about it                          Living amid the machines       

of thought       those blown geometries          where sleeplessness forges    

its unnamable desire                I pay my ear               to the simple ridiculous                     

happinesses                a plane blanketing       the air              another bee                 
                                                                                                               
scissoring through                   aghast  at the plural                             interloping      

ghosts overlapping      We startle at the jackhammer’s           bony knock    

a woodpecker                         We want these things to thing                        for us              

want                to see so as only                     to settle           into a blinding

Being Of

Of course there

are answers
                                                                                                   
in the trees, why else

would they be

there? The shapes are

answers, color

is an answer, a hummingbird

makes an answer of

noise, speed, glass

answers slowly, the air

is a reminder

of an answer said so

early that it needs

to be repeated

now and now

again, the leaves

answer with green applause

the spaces say

please and that is also

an answer, I try

so hard to exact

things and am so densely

removed

from them, but every once

in a while I see fit

to absorb a weightless

answer, an answer without

volume, because

light is there! And all of

the sudden I am

perforated with it

and give off a small

answer of

my own, but let's

not be content

with that, let's touch each

other and go on

stupid and wait without

the sense of it

so soon

enough we can return to

our entanglements, if

only to return from there

to air, to

being of.