Tag: Diane K. Martin

Intelligent Design by Diane K. Martin

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Intelligent Design

Some say the world and everything in it
has been put together piece by piece
like the Lego model of the Titanic on
Nate & Jen’s sideboard, although if you
stepped on a stray piece you wouldn’t think
it was so smart, and you have to wonder
why this designer of the world—because
there must be one—the cause of the effects,
the creator of the consequence—if so
intelligent—gave the tortoise 400 years
and made the cheetah sprint 75 miles per
hour and ants and bees live harmoniously
in communities, but made human beings
war and put heavy hearts in their chests
that beat too slowly or too fast and ache.

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Diane K. Martin lives in West Sonoma County, California. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, American Poetry Review, diode, Field, Plume, and Zyzzyva, among many other journals and anthologies. A poem was awarded second place in the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize, judged by B.H. Fairchild. Another poem received a Pushcart Special Mention, and yet another won first prize from the journal Smartish Pace. Her first book, Conjugated Visits, a National Poetry Series finalist, was published by Dream Horse Press. Her second collection, Hue & Cry, was published by MadHat Press in March, 2020.

Poultry by Diane K. Martin

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Poultry

His father, Isidore, was a chicken plucker in a kosher shop.
They ate a lot of eggs and chickens. He hated the chickens
strung up by their necks in the window of the shop. And the
smell of the pin feathers his mother burned off on the gas.
He hated his mother, Yetta, who told him that she never
meant to have another after Claire, that he was a mistake.
And he hated her lettuce and boiled chicken. And yet,

years after Isidore’s heart gave out and Yetta was stowed
in Kittay House Jewish Home, he stopped, one evening at
Ernie’s Kosher Poultry in the Bronx and bought a just-dead
hen and took it home to us. And he cut into it to show us
the egg in her where it waited to be hatched. But after he
burned the book Yetta wrote about her life, and before he
died, oh how he craved fricassee and a fried egg sandwich.

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Diane K. Martin has been published in American Poetry Review, diode, Field, Kenyon Review, Plume, Rhino, River Styx, and many other journals and anthologies. One of her poems won a prize from Smartish Pace, another placed second in Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Competition, and another received a Pushcart Special Mention. Her first collection, Conjugated Visits, was a National Poetry Series finalist and was published by Dream Horse Press. Her second collection, Hue & Cry, debuted in spring 2020 from MadHat Press.