Reading 2

Laura Martin is a poet and a friend., I’d never heard her read at a poetry event before, so when I realized that I could attend her reading at the Sacramento Poetry Center I was beyond excited. While I was there I remembered that, yes, Laura is a poet of color, which didn’t occur to me in my excitement to hear her read, so the fact that I could type up the event up for our blog was just the icing on the cake.

            The reading was dynamic—everyone was a great reader. The pacing of the event and range, in both prose and poetry, was well done—there were moments that I forgot to take notes, which is rare for me.  Laura’s poems were breathtaking to hear and, with here permission, I have included one of the poems she read (see below).  

            The way Laura uses imagery and short lines in “My Father Is Saw Dust” comes across audibly as well as visually. The first few lines set a dense clustered pace that that builds and builds:

My father is sawdust,

cedar bough and chainsaw
grease.

He is Betadine,
rubbing alcohol, Ben-gay,

the hot plastic of a heating pad set on high

and old blood dried on Band-Aids

left scattered on top of the

bathroom sink.

He is 10W-40 oil,

acetylene gas, BBQ lighter fluid,

wood-glue, rubber cement,


and kindling pitch mixed with turpentine.

The poem is one idea or image on top of another and traps the reader inside of the poem in a manner that seems to mirror how the poet is stuck in the memory or myth of her father.  When the poem turns in the last few lines and ends with the father’s brittle lead, we understand all material things that the father is and all the material things he will never be.

My Father the Sawmill

Laura Martin 2012

My father is sawdust,

cedar bough and chainsaw

grease. He smells like a

Christmas tree every day.

He is melted snow soaked

wet under the bones

of a worn-out Levi Jacket,

mink oil trapped inside

the creases of freshly

polished steel-toed

work boots, new leather

shoelaces and the damp

ash of a Marlboro

tossed into a rain puddle

that he didn’t get a chance

to finish on break. He is Betadine,

rubbing alcohol, Ben-gay,

the hot plastic of a heating pad set on high,

and old blood dried on Band-Aids

left scattered on top of the

bathroom sink.

On weekends, he is Aqua Velva or Old Spice,

Lava hand soap, Barbasol

shaving cream, black Folgers coffee,

and stale Budweiser left out

overnight—opened and

unfinished—on an end table in

the living room. He is 10W-40 oil,

acetylene gas, BBQ lighter fluid,

wood-glue, rubber cement,

and kindling pitch mixed with turpentine.

He is purple Welch’s Grape Juice in a tiny

communion glass, musty hymnal pages,

and mothballs shoved deep down inside the pocket

of an old blue dress jacket.

Mostly though, he is an ashtray

of spent cigarettes mixed

with fresh pencil shavings—

the remnants of a dream house

sketched over and over and over again

on an old pad of blue gridded paper

underneath a thin and brittle lead.

I asked Laura if she considered herself a poet of color and I’ve included her snwser  below—because I find it interesting.

That's a hard question because my adoptive family is white and I am Cherokee/German on my mother's side and Spanish/Irish on my father's (my birthname is McDorman so there you go!). It was obvious to others (and sometimes not so nicely stated) during my childhood that my parents adopted an "ethnic" kid. I didn't find out until I was an adult that many members of my extended adoptive family (aunts, uncles, etc.) where worried that my parents had been tricked into adopting a black baby (can you believe I had this told to me!!!). Dark skin + black curly hair + almond-shaped eyes = a wave of panic in my rightwing, religious, God-fearing southern family.

 I had a fantasy in my head as a kid that my birthfamily was very spiritual in their ethnic background of being native American. I was wrong. They identify as white (but we pretty much all have olive skin and many of us are mistaken for Hispanic/Mexican). I don't identify with any race, really... I'm pretty ambiguous about it. Instead, I strongly identify with being an adult adoptee and being a fat woman.