Domenica Martinello: one poem
CATTLE OF THE SUN
my ex once lived
in a house later dubbed
the “chattel ranch”
it wasn’t a ranch
when he lived there though
his six starving roommates padlocked
their rooms & the one
female roommate padded around
marking their doors in trickster
ink drew dicks
& epithets to humiliate
them each time she got
drunk she cocked her sharpie
to stave off the already gathering
smell of hay
…
each room a padlocked
stanza where the word blue
hasn’t been invented yet
…
ulysses made our bed
bought the frame for cheap
it seemed important to have
someone
to take the long journey
to ikea with
existing out of time eyes an
indescribable yes of light no language
or warning for it
…
back at the ranch the furies
provoke slaughter
on the suitors
sliding down the halls
barding post-monogamous joie de vivre
epic stores of beer like swine
won’t mix
wine with water or wait
for a yes
yes hasn’t been
invented yet
…
hello! my name is:
hard- to- translate
my doglike face
hounds men to make
collect calls
home to their moms
boys will be boys
at the ranch
& launch a thousand ships
on your face
damn that’s one busy
refrain
one version goes you’re safe
one version goes you’re safe if
you sleep in an ink-marked doorway
smudged with hot girlish smoke you can smell
her breath raging
oxen-like, they say
…
the bedframe’s in all the movies
sleep & dream
a quiet art
department’s budget
be recognized forever
in cheap plainness
or die a bitch’s death
in complex glory the floor
…
each has olive tree
growing through it
not immovable, no
but laborious then to extrapolate
Domenica Martinello, from Montréal, Quebec, is completing an MFA in poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 2017 she was a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and the winner of the 3Macs prize. Her debut collection of poems, All Day I Dream About Sirens, is forthcoming from Coach House Books in Spring 2019.
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