THREE POEMS BY MARTINA LITTY

It is December

Like most winters, it is a winter without snow.

I am wound too tight for you to work through.

Murder fictionalized on the television. You split me open.

My bra de-harnessed—I have not been naked

in front of anyone in a long time. You cook for me.

We eat lentils. It does not warm me from the inside

the way I hoped. I do not lick the bowl clean.

Maybe I should have—shivering, one more note

in the cold air ringing without sound. We had to

make our own heat. Sweat like invisible ink, cooling

too soon—the black light aglow at the small

of my back—you write in my mouth—

All winters are not the same winter.

I will remember this as divorced from myself,

watching us from above our bodies.

It is December. I have lived half your life.

Have I lived it better than you?

Is there such a thing?

At the Tattoo Shop

I said No

the cattails don’t look like that—

What leaves have you given them?

Haven’t you ever run to the water’s edge?

Listened to cicadas? Tickled long necks of the cattails

with their slender arms upraised and shifting in the wind

like crickets do? And skimmed your eyes over the water for fish

(without luck) but hooked glimpses of waterbugs skating the creme

(which is a different luck) and a bat fluttered its strange trail above you,

velvet-soft, early, questing in the half-light for precious jewels

(the flickered insects) and a flash of movement called you,

turned your head in the quickening so you caught sight

of that trembling wading bird, drowned your eyes

as it spilled its great wings open, launched

into its twilight flight? No?

Sit down, cattails wake

around us: yawning, stretching

their long limbs; look,

this is the slipped shape of them.

And, yes, before flight, the bird

stood still. Egret, heron, crane—

we will greet our new god by its name

and drink it in. Like ink in skin.

Don’t Fight While I’m in the Shower

Don’t fight while I’m in the shower:

Water coats the floor like leaves,

levees I put my foot through, falling

and cracking my knee on the white tile.

I heard you through the closed door and the false rain;

I heard the lightning of your teeth.

I herd the animals of your bodies

until we’re all panting, peace brokered,

carpet damp.

Martina Litty

is a poet from Laurinburg, North Carolina. She received her BFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2021 and further resided in Wilmington from 2022–2024; she currently lives in Florida. Bull City Press published Litty's microchapbook The Wall Where You Leave Me in June 2022. She fled X (Twitter) but can be found on Instagram @martinalitty1