UNVARNISHED

by Gail Martin

I keep my bitterness in the dark, where it grinds
and pops, creaking like red stalks of rhubarb
forced to grow in sunless sheds. I have a plush life.

I buy a new house but don’t stop hunting.
Pomegranate seeds in my salad. Three kinds
of mechanical pencils. It’s true I never
danced in my mother’s kitchen, schooled

at first to eat everything and then later, nothing.
So what? The world holds many truths- like a bag
of forever. In the dark space under this house, I find

earwigs that can fly. Another truth: A woman
discovers possums on her screen porch. At first,
she doesn’t see them, curled sleeping beneath her rocker,
50 teeth each, 13 nipples arranged like a clock face.

Today rain and failure raise the stakes in my brain.
Today I turn the tulips inside out, supporting one
satin pink petal at a time with my thumb.

I’m worn out from doing my best. Plush life.
Shit that sparkles doesn’t signify unicorn,
it means you have a bat nearby, living rough,
insect wings silver and undigested.

Gail Martin’s third collection, Disappearing Queen won the Wilder Prize (Two Sylvias Press, 2021.) Begin Empty-Handed  won the Perugia Press Poetry prize, (2013), and won the Housatonic Book Award for Poetry. The Hourglass Heart (New Issues), was published in 2003. Martin is a psychotherapist in Kalamazoo, MI. Recent work is in the Winter 2025 issue of The Southern Review,  Asterales ,(Summer 2025) Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and in the anthology Braving the Body, (Harbor Editions, 2024).