Marvin Artis

August 14, 2019

“New Negroes” by Marvin ArtisPosted by

Marvin Artis

NEW NEGROES

Or saltwater negroes is what they called African
slaves who had been in America for less
than two months, about the length of time
it took slavery to break them. New negroes spoke
no English, were more prone to rebellion and running
away than the others. When they escaped,
slave catchers and Native Americans were rewarded
more money for capturing them the longer
they had been free. They were given the best money
if they brought back their scalps with the ears attached
to be displayed to the others with great effect.

Fatima, one of the new negroes, had grown
accustomed to ears and scalps dangling
from sticks speared into the ground.
What she found unbearable was the sun,
shyly rising each day, smoothing a reluctant smile
across her face before gently stroking her eyelids awake,
then brutally bearing down on her by midday,
flattening every inch of her into the numbest,
dumbest person in the world, and the soil,
cool and moist underneath, that tricked her daily
when she was delirious with exhaustion into thinking her hands
were in a river where she was preparing to bathe herself.
Before she knew it, she disrobed each day at dusk in the middle
of the field until a compassionate hand woke her.

The sun that caresses then bludgeons the soil that
carries a river and bodies forgetting to feel and then
remembering the night that keeps coming and the light
that keeps returning.

—from Rattle #64, Summer 2019

__________

Marvin Artis: “I think one of the things I’m most interested in, in poetry, is the opportunity to connect things that don’t appear to be connected. To bring my own disparate parts together and to also build that infrastructure internally, and then be able to apply that to my relationships with other people. The more connections I can find between disconnected things, the better my connections are with others.”

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August 9, 2019

“Two Lovers Standing on the East River Promenade …” by Marvin ArtisPosted by

Marvin Artis

TWO LOVERS STANDING ON THE EAST RIVER PROMENADE, THE WHITE ONE CAREFULLY PICKING THINGS OUT OF THE UNCOMBED AFRO OF THE BLACK ONE

The clouds over them were simple, perfect and white
like those that second graders draw over rooftops.
A plane descended towards LaGuardia Airport,
so slowly it seemed suspended above their heads,
almost as if the passengers had asked the pilots to idle,
while they passed around binoculars to look at their two
fellow men planted below, one looking for something in the other.
The white one stood firmly behind the black one in the same
patch of earth while runners, walkers and parents with strollers
swerved to avoid them. They appeared to have no awareness
of the movement surrounding them, not even the crisp, fall breeze
leaving the river and blowing their shirts around like the flags
standing outside the United Nations building farther north.
The water next to the promenade flowed in its usual ambivalence,
going upriver one moment, downriver the next, sometimes whirlpooling
salty water from the Atlantic Ocean peppered with fresh water
from the Harlem River, a blue gray green mixture masquerading,
passing as a river. Minutes ticked by. Neither said a word to the other,
as the white one peered through bushy, ebony hair,
while the black one stood with his eyes closed.

—from Rattle #64, Summer 2019

__________

Marvin Artis: “I think one of the things I’m most interested in, in poetry, is the opportunity to connect things that don’t appear to be connected. To bring my own disparate parts together and to also build that infrastructure internally, and then be able to apply that to my relationships with other people. The more connections I can find between disconnected things, the better my connections are with others.”

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August 5, 2019

“Poetry” by Marvin ArtisPosted by

Marvin Artis

POETRY

Right now we’re polyamorous. I’ve witnessed her
leaving our home in “come fuck me” heels. I told her
my only rule is that she doesn’t do it in our bed.
She suggested I watch her make love with someone else.
I’m not doing that. I have to find my own way with her.

The thing about Poetry is that she’s got a great ass
and great legs. Her curves show me the relationship between
calculus, geometry and sex. With her, I’m constantly
seeing the connections between things that look like
they have nothing to do with each other. I love her for that.

She recently told me that I’m beginning to bore her,
that she’s not sure we’re meant to be together, but
she said she’s trying to hang in there with me. I told her
that most of the time I don’t know where she’s coming from,
that she’s confusing and often all over the place.
She told me I was supposed to love her mystery.

I was frustrated, so I laughed, which I sometimes do
when I’m frustrated. She rolled her eyes and said she was the best
thing that ever happened to me. I told her she wasn’t open
to letting me be myself. She said she was plenty open,
that I was the one who was closed. She said I loved plopping
fences in rolling fields designed by nature to run naked in.

I told her she didn’t know who I was. I don’t know who you are?
Then tell me who you are, she said. But don’t preach to me
like I’m some kind of idiot. Speak to me like you know
I’ll understand you, and if I don’t understand you,
I’ll feel you. That’s why I’m here.

—from Rattle #64, Summer 2019

__________

Marvin Artis: “I think one of the things I’m most interested in, in poetry, is the opportunity to connect things that don’t appear to be connected. To bring my own disparate parts together and to also build that infrastructure internally, and then be able to apply that to my relationships with other people. The more connections I can find between disconnected things, the better my connections are with others.”

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November 21, 2018

“Penumbra” by Marvin ArtisPosted by

Marvin Artis

PENUMBRA

She asked if I could see it. I suggested she look
for herself. It’s not possible, she said. I’m too old.
I’ve lost my flexibility. Can you see it? she asked again.
I lied and said I couldn’t. But there it was,
in her penumbra, a term I discovered while reading
a case in law school where a Supreme Court justice
declared that the hallowed, American right to privacy
wasn’t explicitly in the Constitution but in the penumbra
of the Bill of Rights. He misused the word. Penumbra means
the dark part of a shadow, a place of partial light.

I won’t reveal what she wanted me to see. It’s private.
What matters is that everyone has penumbras.
No person is a light source. We, the people, are not luminous.
We are not the sun, not even a beautifully lit candelabra.
Light doesn’t pass through us. No one is a clean glass
of spring water reflecting the morning sun. In low light,
our dense bodies block light and create shadows.

I didn’t like lying, but there wasn’t enough light to see clearly.
More than that, I didn’t want to argue about what I did see.
Every argument I’ve ever had was a debate about the existence
or non-existence of something. When everything can be seen,
there is nothing to argue about. Much of the time, I’m in low light
with my shadow companion and in communion with others
and their shadows, like our ancestors, warming themselves
and admiring each other around a dancing fire in the gloaming.
Half our lives are spent in the night and another portion
in the dim sun of cloudy days. We, the people, are used to low light
and the struggle to find things in it, which reminds me of those times
when I would rummage in my childhood bedroom, in a rush to find
something, too unaware and too used to the dark to turn on a lamp
or raise a window shade, as my mother would pass by, chuckle,
then hit the light switch, without saying a word.

—from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication

__________

Marvin Artis: “One of the things I’m most interested in, in poetry, is the opportunity to connect things that don’t appear to be connected. To bring my own disparate parts together and to also build that infrastructure internally, and then be able to apply that to my relationships with other people. The more connections I can find between disconnected things, the better my connections are with others.”

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November 19, 2018

“Life” by Marvin ArtisPosted by

Marvin Artis

LIFE

I have this thing that I was given when I was born. 
It’s called a life. I really don’t know how else to
describe it. It’s so big. I can only say what it’s called.

It took me a while to figure out that this big thing was mine,
that I could do with it whatever I wanted.
After I decided what I wanted to do with it,
I changed my mind. Then, I changed my mind again. 
I changed it one more time.

Life, being whatever it is, also seems to have its own mind,
even though it’s yours. It’s like your father or mother or son 
or daughter or dog. They’re yours, but they have their own minds too.
So, at one point, my life said “no” to something I wanted to do. 
Just like that, it said, “no.” I was surprised.

I had this dream in which I was with this beautiful soul whom I loved 
who had the habit of telling me how to speak and what
words to use. Finally, I lost my temper and started screaming that nothing
makes me crazier than being told what to say and how to say it.
I kept screaming, “No, no, no, no!”

Life is like that too. It can scream, “No!” even though it loves you. 
It wants to be itself, to be looked at and loved for what it is, 
not for what you want it to be, especially when it has morning breath,
gets sick, puts on weight, loses its looks, its admirers or its money.
That’s when it wants you to reach out, hold its hand, to tell it
that it’s beautiful and that you will never leave it, even though
it will leave you. It’s so demanding, so precious. It’s something else.

—from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication

__________

Marvin Artis: “One of the things I’m most interested in, in poetry, is the opportunity to connect things that don’t appear to be connected. To bring my own disparate parts together and to also build that infrastructure internally, and then be able to apply that to my relationships with other people. The more connections I can find between disconnected things, the better my connections are with others.”

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October 17, 2018

“Purple Hearts” by Marvin ArtisPosted by

Marvin Artis

PURPLE HEARTS

“If I’m gonna die, you’re gonna die with me.”
Words waved by Lashanda Armstrong through her van
before she drives herself and her four little children
into the Hudson River on April 12, 2011.

La’Shaun, her ten-year-old son from her first boyfriend,
refused her invitation, most likely in a quiet and polite manner.
There couldn’t have been time for a loud and dramatic departure.

He planned his escape while she attempted to back the van
out of eight feet of water. As he climbed over her lap
and out of the window, she grabbed his leg and admitted,
“I made a mistake. I made a terrible mistake.”

She let him go. Her death proposal sank. Her dying
admission stuck. He made his way through 25 yards
of ugly, cold Hudson River water back to the road of their departure.
“Help me, help me. Somebody please help me,” he screamed
repeatedly, waving his hands from the side of the road.
The night air surrounding him was skeptical, as pairs of eyes
blinked at him from cars that rolled on without stopping.

A woman’s heart screeched to a halt, and so did her car.
He was rescued by a woman who had never cared for him.
A mother successfully kills her child every three days in America.

Purple hearts and medals of courage for those who survive
the attacks of strangers. Nothing for those who survive
the attacks of loved ones.

A few days later, a picture of La’Shaun, smiling,
appears in the newspaper. He looks like a normal
ten-year-old boy because that’s exactly what he was.

—from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication

__________

Marvin Artis: “I was an English major in college, and I started writing what I thought was fiction about ten years ago. I said to the person I was working with, ‘You know, this stuff I’m writing looks more like poetry than prose. Do you think this is poetry?’ And he said, ‘No, there’s all kinds of prose. I think you should just keep pushing the prose.’ But about six years ago I started writing what was coming to mind, and it was absolutely poetry. I’ve read great poets, and I didn’t think my poems at the time were in the same universe of great poetry. I knew I needed some help, but I didn’t quite know how, or what kind of help I could get. One day I was sitting in a café, and there was an old New Yorker magazine on the table. At one time I was a subscriber, but at some point I’d stopped. So I picked it up, and it just so happened to be an issue with one of Diana Goetsch’s poems in it. And I thought, ‘This is stuff I really like. This is a room of poetry I’d like to be in.’ So I googled the name, didn’t know anything about her. I saw that she happened to give workshops. I called, and it just so happened that there was a workshop starting. Her workshops really helped me to get my poems more in the form I wanted them to be in.”

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October 15, 2018

“Meditation on a Dining Room Table” by Marvin ArtisPosted by

Marvin Artis

MEDITATION ON A DINING ROOM TABLE

She wanted warm wood. He wanted the sleek and gleam
of glass and steel. They compromised and brought home
the one with a glass top and a wood base. In the early years,
the new table, standing among graduate school relics, served
as evidence that they had married far more than their marriage
license. The glass and wood held wedding china,
candlelight, dreams and last looks before sex.

Both of them thought it was half-assed, but each pretended to like it.
She hated cleaning it. It was the only thing he liked to clean.
If he noticed a bit of dust clinging, he would whisk it away.
She never did that. Two or three times each year, the marriage
would demand something from each of them, so that it could live.

They divorced. She kept the house and the table in it. Years later
he could recall none of their married furniture in detail, except the table.
He never returned to their home, but he received pictures
of their kids over the years where the table sometimes wandered
into the background. It always surprised him to see it, but each time
it sent a wish up his spine. If only he could know what he didn’t know.
Why didn’t she let it go as she did with so many other things?
Was she the one who cleaned it, or did she usually leave it for one
of the kids to do? Did her hands, which were really beautiful, stroke it
with care or with obligation when she wiped spills and smudges away?
Did she and the table ever sit alone together in the dining room,
her soft palms resting on its firmness, just being with each other in silence?

—from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication

__________

Marvin Artis: “One of the things I’m most interested in, in poetry, is the opportunity to connect things that don’t appear to be connected. To bring my own disparate parts together and to also build that infrastructure internally, and then be able to apply that to my relationships with other people. The more connections I can find between disconnected things, the better my connections are with others.”

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