#MIDDLEBURY
The/A Train
David Tomas Martinez
A honey badger’s skin can
withstand multiple blows
from machetes, arrows,
and spears, but these rusted
weapons haven’t killed
anything in years, so that may
be the lesson there, that
there is no there there, like
many poems, like many
revolutions, and maybe there
isn’t a there there in many
people only that foggy
anachronistic lizard eye,
or what I have come to call
the part of consciousness that
builds impediments, isolates,
the “supertrump.” Or
what New Yorkers call
subways. Or what a King
calls a dream. Or what X
called Y. What the crowd
yells as lit, The Cave calls dim.
What they deem in West
Tejas as a fancy evening out
is rocking on the porch,
aint they good at irony,
where watching the fugitive
moon runaway takes days,
like the time I caught the C
I hoped was an A, and saw a
butterfly move in what I can
only say is protest. The wings
made small combustions
through the car. Eyes trained.
The awful is tracked by
awe. An officer lifts his
gun, yells to raise your hands
higher the TV flutters.
Watch it. They will
call you moth and kill you.
About this poem
“This is protest. Repeatedly brown and black bodies are being brutalized in our country. In this case, the shooting of a compliant Charles Kinsey by North Miami police. His hands were empty and raised. According to reports, when Kinsey asked the officer why he shot him, the officer replied, ‘I don’t know.'” – David Tomas Martinez
About David Tomas Martinez
Martinez is the author of “Hustle” (Sarabande Books, 2014). He teaches creative writing at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 David Tomas Martinez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
