Martina’s
most recent book is LEARNING
BY ROTE (Deerbrook Editions).
She
is also the author of WHAT WE CAN’T FORGIVE.
LATE NIGHT RADIO, PERHAPS
YOU
COULD BREATHE FOR ME. HUNGER,
AFTER
THE EARTHQUAKE: POEMS
1996-2006, NOT
UNTRUE & NOT UNKIND (Arabesques Press) and RUNNING
LIKE A WOMAN WITH
HER HAIR ON FIRE: Collected Poems (Red Hen Press)
Ms.
Newberry is the winner of i.e. magazine’s
Editor’s Choice Poetry
Chapbook Prize for 1998: AN
APPARENT, APPROACHABLE LIGHT.
She
is also the author of LIMA
BEANS AND CITY CHICKEN: MEMORIES OF
THE OPEN HEARTH—a memoir of her father, (one of the first men
ever to be
hired at Kaiser Steel in Fontana, CA in 1943)—published by E.P. Dutton
and Co.
in 1989.
Newberry
has been included in Ascent
Aspirations first two hard-copy Anthologies, also in the
anthologies In
The Company Of Women and Blessed
Are These Hands. She has been widely published in
literary magazines in the
She
has been awarded residencies at
Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and at
A
passionate lover of
Does God want us to behave like bats?
We use our wings only to get out
of the dark—we seek God in it.
We sweat out the endless day, remain
silent as death, ask no questions, seek
nothing, But in Night’s darkest black, we
batter our wings and scream “why?” and nourish
ourselves with the blood of lesser creatures.
The air moves constantly under us
as if earth did not exist. We know
it’s there of course, but we ignore it.
Its firmness is unnecessary.
We are looking for God—flying and
screaming to each other, bouncing our
voices off trees and rooftops and drainpipes.
“Where?” we shriek. “Have you found Him?” “Is there
hope?” God shakes his fist at us. “Go home!”
He rages at us, “Day is coming!”
“Go home to bed! Begin again tomorrow.”
FOURTEEN MILES OUTSIDE THE CAPE OF THE POOR CLARES (A NAME I INVENTED—PFEIFFER-BIG SUR AUGUST 19, 1984)
The hugeness in this silence is a net;
it hauls me in; a dream after too much drinking.
Everything here moves, swells, is excited,
quelled and dropped, to be picked up again
and far flung around rock points. Like a
convalescing tubercular, cautious
with my steps, with where I sit, what I eat,
how I move. There is hope for a wind
redemption, but it is long in coming
as are all healings. These white-wrapped seditious
visions are impatient, need an instrument
as I need instincts—mine are worn. I make
a fist, try to force a way into my
own stillness. Breaking and entering, stealing
what I will not give. Two with me here:
two aunts; one alive, to do me an
unkindness, one dead, touching my face while
I sleep. We had not seen each other for weeks,
then she died I was abased by that then
and am now. This is not about the death
of an aunt, after all. It is about
the ocean and the quiet river and
wood smoke filtering through the valley at Big Sur.
Martina Reisz Newberry was a Featured Poet who read her poetry at the August 2013 Second Sunday Poetry Series