Dawn Lundy Martin, Instructions for The Lovers

 

In the end, I suppose,defeat is inevitable,
            the closing of something once delicately propped
open, a silk curtainfloated back to its nature,
            or a mother, which is what this is really about—fetish of
the mother, the fetish ofher under my tongue, bleating
            about. Even I can’t let go, can’t sift her being (thatpart
of her that’s her) frommy hands. What’s wanted
            is not to be gotten, no frolic in dancing fields,
no cupping of theinvisible cup, gentle water, soft hand,
            sweet ache of breath into mine. Mine, slats between—what
was it? What is it now? Whenyour voice comes through
            my ear, technological and distant, the crack of it
as much a weapon as afrozen foot, as much the desert’s
            reflective waterwell as any (                                     )—
You see that? My handsarching around what would be absence
            If absence were rot inside the body. We both hold it. (“FROMWHICH THE THING IS MADE”)

Thefifth full-length poetry title by American poet and essayist Dawn Lundy Martinis the remarkable Instructions for The Lovers (New York NY: NightboatBooks, 2024). I admire the delicate precision of Martin’s lyrics, set with aclear sense of music and the line. “The lover was here and then was not.” she writes,to open the prose-block “INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE LOVERS,” This is always / thecase. The lover persists in loverness and then, poof. / Not poof poof but outof the kitchen and casual naked- / ness. The lover is a long tail though. Whippingaround.” Her poems hold a determination, weave and pitch; a clarity of purposeand a narrative delicacy, weaving simultaneously around and through hersubjects, fully aware of the shapes of her stories.

Openingwith a minimalist sequence, “[After wind was water],” the poems evolve across threesection-clusters of sharp lyrics before ending with a sequence of prose poems,and an extended, accumulated phrase-lyric. While some might shift form asexploratory, Martin already employs a mastery across a variety of structures,all of which allow for her particular rhythm of narrative unfolding. “And yet,”the poem “A WILD WEED” offers, “what savagery disrobes inside order? / Whatstreet fight made fragile in a hot / face glow parted so that, so that / allliquid is in retrieval.”