Sara Michas-Martin received a BFA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from the University of Arizona where she held a Poet-in-the-Schools teaching fellowship granted by the University of Arizona Poetry Center. She is a former Stegner Fellow and currently holds a Jones Lectureship at Stanford University. Recent work appears in Elixir, Good Foot, The Iowa Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Threepenny Review, Third Coast, and on Poetry Daily.

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Three Poems:

Bangkok
April, 2000

All night I felt my teeth
            ejectable, loosening
on their own accord. Quiet waits
in the Shrine
                        at Turtle Mount.
I buy cheese and a stick from the monks,
            extend the food to animals
who divide the blackness of the pond.
                        At home
we fashion sticks
with marshmallows, try and scare each other
in the dark.
                        Every male here ordained.
            I watch the young novice
bow, and make offerings to his teacher.
            Even this hot, the city swells
like a coherence of bees, absorbs aimlessness
            easily,
                        then appetite, then
            aimlessness.
Across the ocean,
they evict mountain lions from Madera Canyon.
Two teenagers shoot up their school.
                                                            My dentist says,
losing teeth is a woman’s dream,
            common
            and associated with vanity.
                        The brain continues
its left turns—
                        sees floating
in the pond, film canisters,
lychee pits and bottles; arrives at
                                    snow, the lost feeling of wool,
what it’s like to sit
in a car frosted over.

[first appeared in The Spoon River Poetry Review]

Any Fresh Water Beach
                                        for Brooke

we corresponded nicely with spiders. agreed with the sand in our hair. remember? spent all day losing the desert. rinsed the faces. the talk. the where are you from? slept. wet salad of bones. next time answer: pine watered air. wood soaked in water. grass that’s sharp, waxy, specific. we carried frogs in our pockets. plucked mayflies like berries off the barn. all day in water. no land on the other side. no salt.

[first appeared in The Spoon River Poetry Review]

Utility

Beyond vehicle
            or desire—the body     
           
            I love most.

A mixed country of cells.  One broad muscle moving.

The nude figure model
intent on holding a pose. 

The artist behind newsprint
drafting the wrist and jawbone.

The darks. The lights.

The soft nerve machine
that visits the doctor
            when a part is down.

The nurse who travels
the patient’s chest

            listening
for the heart to stutter.

[first appeared in The Spoon River Poetry Review]

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