Tag: Marc Alan Di Martino

An Enemy Within by Marc Alan Di Martino

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An Enemy Within

Each of us has an enemy within.
For some it’s that voice in back of the mind
rehearsing our shortcomings, assuring us

we’re not enough for this world. For others
it’s the barber, the shopkeeper down the block,
their esoteric powers of endurance

hinting at some gross imbalance in the scales.
For others still it’s both at once—an inferno
of adversaries unfurling with each uneasy step.

You disappear into a restroom, splash
your face with water but there’s no escape
from yourself. The ghoul in the glass is you,

the enemy that pollutes every breath.
The mosquito in your ear will never
cease its drilling, a torment worse than death.

*

Inspiration for this poem is addressed in Heather Cox Richardson’s post from September 30, 2025. Hegseth’s unprecedented demand that large numbers of America’s top military personnel meet on short notice and at great expense to the American public.

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A Note from The Author

When a person sees enemies everywhere they look, one must come to the conclusion that their true enemy is in the mirror. America does indeed have ‘an enemy within’, but it isn’t the one the current regime thinks it is. The call, as they say, is coming from inside the house.

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Marc Alan Di Martino’s books include Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco (World Poetry, 2024—longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation), Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Rattle, iamb, Palette Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.

Worm Wisdom by Marc Alan Di Martino

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Worm Wisdom

The cut worm forgives the plow.
—Blake

This morning I refuse to read the news,
allow it dominion over my attention
as I’ve grown accustomed to. Rather,

I’m attending to those rowdy blackbirds
in the elms, making their usual ruckus
over blackbird politics, the mottled

tabby belly up on the paving stones
stoned on the sunlight of a cloudless noon,
the worm inching its way across the lawn

on its long, slow journey to worm wisdom.
See that pile of leaves over near the fence
my wife raked yesterday, her perfect hands

gathering up order out of chaos?
I watched her kneel down to pull up a root
from the soil, pluck out a pesky weed

doing her part to make space in this world
for beauty, bequeath us the gift of herself—
the best of herself, the best of all of us.

*

Marc Alan Di Martino’s books include Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco (World Poetry, 2024—longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation), Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Rattle, iamb, Palette Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.

Murderers by Marc Alan Di Martino

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Murderers

“Meditate che questo è stato.”
—Primo Levi

Let’s make a deal: for every time you ask me
how ‘my people’ could do such a thing—
bomb an apartment building, starve innocent
children, shoot journalists—I get to ask
how ‘your people’ were able to herd ‘my people’
for centuries into ghettos, cattle cars,
ovens. We can make it a game of poker
between God and the Devil, only
they’re wearing disguises so no one knows
who’s who, as if it made any difference
anyway, God or Devil, Israeli or Palestinian,
gentile or Jew. We’ll play this psychotic hand
with a stacked deck for the rest of our lives
and then our children’s lives, our children’s children’s,
tweaking the muscles in our poker faces
until the flesh tightens into a mask
and tongues become poisonous little vipers
concealed behind our teeth, stretched
to the thin shield of a smile, perfectly white
and malicious.

*

Marc Alan Di Martino’s books include Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco (World Poetry, 2024—longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation), Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Rattle, iamb, Palette Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.

This poem was written in response to the following news story.

My Theory of Everything About the ‘Houthi PC small group’ by Marc Alan Di Martino

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My Theory of Everything About the ‘Houthi PC small group’
My personal TOE is that this was an SOS,
a holler for help so dire it could only come
from inside the house, from someone
so paralyzed that their only hope of escape
was to cc the editor of The Atlantic
in a group chat on an unsecured app
and…let the tape roll. Maybe in this way
the outside world could intervene, call
their bluff, do something. My TOE is sound
and has been vetted. It has been confirmed
by the Senate. It has survived multiple
hearings and a couple of jittery visits
to the Supreme Court, where it won
in a 5-4 decision. My TOE is foolproof,
bulletproof, hundred proof grain alcohol,
Occam’s Razor-sharp, capable of shaving
the false beard off the baby face of Truth
revealing a lean, mean fact-checking machine.
These days it seems the Truth is under attack
from all sides—not unlike the Houthi pirates—
and many have come to the sad conclusion
that “truth” is merely a personnel [sic] opinion,
and that to lord one’s truth over another’s
is tantamount to flying your war plans [sic]
into the World Trade Center, which of course
was already destroyed by illegal immigrants
flooding our borders, and even J.D. Vance
giving a thumbs-up emoji is really just his way
of saying
I’m trapped
in a deep well please
somebody help—
*
Marc Alan Di Martino’s books include Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco (World Poetry, 2024—longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation), Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Rattle, iamb, Palette Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.

Two Poems by Marc Alan Di Martino

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New study finds

there is no real difference
between playing 17-dimensional chess
and acting perfectly at random.

To find meaning in things
where none exists
is called ‘apophenia’.

Jesus’ visage in a slice of burnt
toast, for example,
or the Man in the Moon

for another. These are projections
of our fears and desires.
So when you hear, next week

or the week after,
amid the firestorm of ‘breaking news’
that Hulk Hogan or Kid Rock

has been tapped
for high office—likely one
requiring bona fides

beyond a hit single
from 1999, or a signature
flex of the bicep—

remember that sometimes things
are what they seem
and any group of primates

ululating loud enough can shatter glass.

*

Victor’s

A restaurant once stood on this spare lot,
its scampi sizzling for a local crowd,
its Wednesday Specials and barroom loud
with swingers swapping numbers, the lights hot.

Now Victor’s is a sign along the road,
its fancy lettering in black and gold
conjuring late nights clad in silk and pearl—
each furtive tryst absolved in time’s slow whirl.

*

Marc Alan Di Martino’s books include Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco (World Poetry, 2024 – translator), Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Rattle, iamb, Palette Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.

Figs by Marc Alan Di Martino

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Figs

By mid-July, the figs are purple-green
and yearn for you to twist their delicate necks,
pluck their swollen sweetness off the branch.
Feel for the softest, highest fruit, concealed
behind a cluster of verdant teardrops.
You could lose yourself in a place like this—
a palace of sugar, a motherly embrace
of tender giving tendrils, mouth bloodied
and silent. You could forget yourself here.

*

Marc Alan Di Martino is the author of Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City Press, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Gyroscope Review, Welter, Rattle and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His translation Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco will be published by World Poetry Books in 2024. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.

Skylight by Marc Alan Di Martino

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Skylight

Everything you do, I did
at your age: the tousled
bangs draped over your
eyes shielding you from
scrutiny, the oversize
sweatshirts, the baggy
jeans, the unassailable
scowl, the quiet allure
of darkness & the stark
conviction that life
is royally unfair
to all—but mainly you.
I get it. I do. We too
had indecipherable
slang and snickered
at others’ inability to read
our thoughts, emitted
through cryptic tics
of the nervous system,
black holes of significance
behind the iron event
horizon of each mono-
syllabic moan, each groan
of disapproval. I’m here
to tell you all of this
is normal, fine, okay,
copacetic, kosher, chill.
It will run its course
like a cold, so common
is it to the species. Life
is precious (yes, I know
you’ll laugh at this
so be my guest), an old
saying that never loses
its sting. Nothing
matters to me more
than you and I really
think you need to hear
this now, as it’s been
hit-or-miss lately
between us. Maybe if
I can manage to crack
your skylight open
a bit I’ll let some sun
in. Just don’t forget
to look up
or you’ll miss it.

*

Marc Alan Di Martino is the author of Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City Press, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Autumn Sky, Orange Blossom Review, Rattle and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His translation Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco will be published by World Poetry Books in 2024. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.

Two Poems [trans.] by Marc Alan Di Martino

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Blackbird

Black as coal,
night swallows it whole.
Drowning in darkness, its beak
(a fleck of light) pecks at the sky: tin,
tin. It opens. The sun comes roaring in.

Er merlo (Blackbird)

Nero come er carbone
la notte se l’ignotte in un boccone.
A mollo ar nero fino ar collo, er becco
(un petalo de sole) bussa ar celo:
er celo s’apre – e sorte un sole intero.

*

The Illiterate Fish

Someone dropped a book
in an aquarium. The fish,
illiterate, darted away
from m and b, zig-
zagged around h and p
but in the end z
snagged it on a hook.

Er pesce anarfabbeta (The Illiterate Fish)

Er silabbario casca ne l’acquario.
Er pesce anarfabbeta
sfugge all’emme e a la bi,
schiva l’acca e la pi:
ma resta preso all’amo de la zeta.

*

Marc Alan Di Martino is a Pushcart-nominated poet, translator and author of the collections Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His work appears in Palette Poetry, Rattle, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, Valparaiso Poetry Review and many other journals and anthologies. Currently a poetry reader for the Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy. Marc’s full-length collection of Mario dell-Arco translations is forthcoming from World Poetry Books (2024).

Mario dell’Arco is the pen name of Mario Fagiolo (Rome, 1905-1996). Dell’Arco wrote in romanesco, the dialect of the Roman people, and was perhaps the last great poet in a lineage that includes Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, Trilussa and Crescenzo Del Monte. Dell’Arco’s poetry is epigrammatic in style, intensely personal and abounding in rhyme and wit. His work, translated into many languages, has been largely unavailable in English.

Rain by Marc Alan Di Martino

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Rain

It rained for the first time all summer
today. Rills of atmospheric runoff
filled the roof gutters, sloshed down the sides
of our house. The car glowed like a glazed
donut, or a dog freshly praised
by its owner. I read once how
in the youthful days of Earth
when all was barren and alien
it rained for 200,000 years straight
swelling the oceans, prepping land for life.
You have a debt to rain. You owe it this much: listen.

*

Marc Alan Di Martino is a Pushcart-nominated poet, translator and author of the collections Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His work appears in Palette Poetry, Rattle, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, Valparaiso Poetry Review and many other journals and anthologies. Currently a poetry reader for the Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.