Poetry by Carlos Martinez

Riff on a poem by Christopher Marlowe
After “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love”

Come live with me and be my love
and make love to me all night long,
and at the end of every day, and when
we’re tired of making love, our hands

callused by touching each other, our skin
planed smooth as wood, let us get up,
dress and go down to the beach
we’ll live close to, where the wind will whip

the waves into a frenzy we’ll recognize
and laugh about. And then we’ll sit
on rocks half-in, half-out of the water,
their bottoms covered with foam, where spray

can sweep over us. We’ll sit quietly,
looking out to where the breakers begin
and to where the gulls wheel every day
and where the cormorants dive for their supper.

We’ll admire empty whelk shells and watch
hermit crabs scuttle beneath
torpid kelp. Then we can walk home again,
holding hands so everyone knows we’re lovers

and we’ll put logs into the fireplace,
order take-out and wait for the pizza man
to bring our supper. We’ll open bottle
after bottle of wine and we’ll get drunk

in front of a roaring fire and maybe
we’ll play jazz – dark and bluesy –
the perfect music to get naked by,
our bodies reddened by desire.

Carlos Martinez lives in Edmonds, WA, earned an MFA at Antioch University LA and teaches literature and creative writing at Western Washington University. He's been published locally in Cranky, Crab Creek Review, Poets West Literary Journal, Jeopardy, and 4th Street, as well as the local anthologies Vox Populi (1999 Seattle Poetry Festival); Pontoon #5 (Floating Bridge Press); and The Sound Close In (2004 Skagit River poetry Festival). He's also published nationally in Morpo Review, Yawp, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Black Bear Review, Poet Lore and Firefly as well as in the anthology An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11. In 2000, he was one of two featured poets at Poetrymagazine.com and in 2004 he was a featured reader and participant at the Skagit River Poetry Festival. His chapbook, The Cold Music of the Ocean, was published in August 2004. In 2003, he took second prize in the americas review poetry contest, Jane Hirshfield, judge. He was recently selected as a 2005 Jack Straw Writing Fellow by Jack Straw Productions in Seattle.