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.
