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Whenever You Read Poetry

By D.S. Martin
                Whenever you read poetry   you must always
always   always   read it aloud   so that each sound's
sonorously sung   letting your lilting tongue  
deliciously dance   lightly brushing the back
of your central incisors   tasting the patterns
as your lips pucker and pop   as you subconsciously
adjust the shape & size of your versatile mouth  
& you push & pull   in & out   the very air
you live on   in a game   of beauty & complexity
                & as the poem plays on your lips
you must slow the process   pausing
or half pausing   so that its phrasing never trips
so that its meaning   settles into your being
since it's simultaneously designed   to propel
you forward   & to startle you to a complete halt  
making you want to start again   from the beginning
                Whenever you read poetry   you must always
always   always   read it aloud   except of course
when you   silently   read it aloud   that is  
when you read it aloud in your head   so that your tongue
pretends to be doing nothing   but is subversively
twitching   all its movements imagined
like the way you secretly run & jump across
the racing rooftops   while others only see you
as a sophisticated adult   book in hand
silently staring   out the window   
of your commuter train


How She Reads a Poem

By D.S. Martin
          Her approach is not unusual
like steeling herself    two hands on the wheel
accelerating down the onramp   checking for blind spots
even before she begins   
                                      to read the poem  
          She sees it as a forward linear trajectory  
the driving subject   verb
from point-of-departure   to point-of-arrival
with no thought for how lines 
break   how gaps                                         suddenly gape
as though they were totally   
                                            random
          When she drives   she keeps space   between
her front bumper   & the car ahead   
                                                         slips into the right lane 
well before it’s time to get off   reading  
the intent of nearby drivers   between the lines
But once she's begun
                                    to read the poem
her aim is simply   to have read the poem
          By the second stanza   or the third
she won't check the rearview   or circle
back to refocus on that image   of a driver about to merge
with traffic   will have not caught   the poet's said more
than she first thought   For she reads as a means
to an end   skimming toward
                                                some destination  
           But if she were more of a tourist   she wouldn't
simply scan four lanes to traverse the city   she’d head
downtown   to take its pulse   to pause   where glass
towers touch its red-brick past
           She'd head mapless into autumnal hills   for the sake
of the winding road   & what fades along its fringe
of open space   & the tinge of red maples
against the sky   of what clings to a blade of grass
& the tangible absence of those no longer on the land
           She'd catch the sunlight
shimmering on a thread of water   where the blacktop 
dips through a ravine   & stop   to stretch her legs
because she'd know   that this place   where she's arrived
is how to read a poem


D.S. Martin is the author of four poetry collections, including Ampersand (2018), & Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis (2013) — both from Cascade Books. He is Poet-in-Residence at McMaster Divinity College, the Series Editor for the Poiema Poetry Series, and has edited three anthologies — The Turning Aside (2016), Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse (2017), and In A Strange Land (2019). He and his wife live in Brampton, Ontario; they have two adult sons.
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