Martin Rock

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READINGS/ CONFERENCES:CONFERENCES:Thursday, March 1 - 10:30 AM to 11:45 AM - Crystal Room, Palmer House Hilton, ChicagoAWP Conference, From Litmag to Chapbook Press: Championing the Handmade inthe Digital Morass Panel Moderator with Anna Moschavakis, Ana Bozicevic, Nate Pritts, and Ben Fama. July 15th-22nd, Port TownsendOffered a full scholarship to the Port Townsend Writers Conference to study with Dana Levin.June 28th- 30th, Jackson Hole WYInvited to be on the faculty at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference for its 20th year. Other faculty members include Naomi Shihab Nye, Anita Diamont, and others.READINGS: Saturday, Nov. 19th - FIRESIDE FOLLIESBrooklyn Fire Proof 119 Ingraham St. 7 PMTuesday, Sept. 30th - METRO RHYTHMwith Josh Bell, Montana Ray, Katie Byrum, and Genevieve Burger-WeiserSaturday, March 19th _8pmA DAY IN THE LIFE OF A WHITE GIRL DEALER w/ Jealocheeo Gellokhalilo, Lily Ladewig, Lauren Ireland, and Hanna Andrews245 Varet St, Third FloorBrooklyn, NYSunday, Dec. 12 _ 7pmINDIGEST 3 YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY:w/ Jackie Clark, Autumn Giles, Steven Karl, Becca Klaver, Martin Rock, Leigh Stein, Bianca Stone, Ronaldo V. Wilson, and Erica WrightLe Poisson Rouge | New York | 7pmSaturday, Dec. 4thSUNSET POETRY SERIES: 6PM with Melissa Broder and Jason KooSuryasta Yoga,462 36th Street, BrooklynFriday, May 28th _ 7:30 PM, EARSHOT! _ Rose Live Music, Brooklyn (with John Murillo, Brian Foley, Mike Soto, and Samantha K. Smith)Friday, May 21, 2010 _ 7:00 PM, Multifarious Array presents Poets and Puppets, Pete's Candy Store, Brooklyn (with Kathleen Rooney, Sasha Fletcher, Jason Zuzga, Jason Koo, Leigh Stein, Sommer Browning, and Noah Eli Gordon)Thursday, May 13, 2010 _ 8:00 PM, Book Launch/Reading for Season Four of Pilot Books, Amherst Books, Amherst (with Jessica Fjeld and Emily Pettit)Sunday, April 18, 2010 _ 2:00 PM, New News #1, Jan Platt Library, Tampa (with Brigid Ochshorn, Skeleton Warrior, Gregory Elliot, Shane Hinton, Mez Breeze, Autumn Widdoes, Christen Pettit, and Ben Mirov)Saturday, April 17, 2010 _ 6:00 PM, "No, Dear" Issue Release Reading, Pete's Candy Store, Brooklyn (with Jessica Beyer, Marina Blitshteyn, James Copeland, Iris Marble Cushing, Steven Karl, Eric Pitra, Matt Reeck, Levi Rubeck, Adam Wiedewitsch, and Helen Witherspoon.)Friday, April 17, 20097:00 pm - 9:00 pm NYU Emerging Writers featuring Scott SnyderKGB Bar, 85 East 4th StreetNew York City, NYTuesday, March 24th, 20096:00 PM - 7:30 PMGraduate Poetry series at Cornelia St. Cafewith Sarah Dimick, Autumn Giles, and Victoria McCoy
POEMS

A MOMENT OF SLEEP

Im reading Po Chü-I,

who fell asleep

1200 years ago

while riding a horse.

Last night I nodded off

on my way home

and when I awoke,

the train was full of ghosts.

first appeared in elimae

THE VERY AIR THAT IS BREATHED

first appeared in Tuesday; an Art Project

January. The earth is cold in all the wrong places on a body. Naked foot in the grass, blood speckled futon. Morning.Bless the eight-million spirits and their dual souls for that blood.They populate the oceans, the forests,the very air that is breathed.We are one of them, inhabiting opposite ends of the earth. In one of the myriad worldswe are married. We have a child.In this one, we are green with each other and there is a ghetto of reptiles on the lawn. I have phantom limbs of herthat throb and tickle and smell of pine.Return each winter to sit alone under the heated coils of a kotatsuand eat mikan until my skin is orange.Her skull is the same shape as my skull in that we are crushed with each other,will be discovered by the earth diggersand pieced back together.Salt of the earth in the wound.Tulips growing from it, bitter to the taste and the cold. Open slowly to the touch.

NO. 9, DARK OVER LIGHT EARTH, 1954

The night is earth piled on earth

and everything buried there is peering in.

Face pressed against the glass

of your basement window, body on its hands

and knees breathes fog and writes in glossolalia.

It seems you view daytime as heavier than night.

If not heavier, more solid. The night

is ambiguous, and swallows both of us.

Is nothing more than light bouncing

off the opposite side of the earth, which ends.

The child sees faces first, learns to recognize emotion

through the lips, the eyes. Thank you

for this map of time and its tributaries.

The Mishradic position says we spend our lives

reacquainting ourselves with lost knowledge.

In utero we are taught by angels, who then strike us

on the soft beneath the nose, that we forget.

first appeared in Jellyroll Magazine

PROTAGORAS

first appeared in InDigest Magazine

An ancient story admired his poiseand decided to instruct him.The story's system of grammaris said to have drowned at sea.Volume, not humanity,was the first traveling teacher of philosophy.Metaphysical theoriesconsider good manners for a fee.Sophists have widely accepted portraitsof the Sophists.Ethics critique the limits of knowledgein the history of thought.Learning must begin in the gods,whether they exist or do not exist.Art without practice, and practicewithout art, do not take root in the deep.

ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA

first appeared in DIAGRAM

Under the dark-blue cloud with a glint of the red horse I dimly recognize all that has been.—Czeslaw Milosz1.In the beginning there was a dingbatwho cut the durian sky in half.The beginning stunk like corpsefoot.The beginning was a foolish place to start.There were also 54 leopardssplit down the middleand splayed wet over the cooling earth.Memory of early grounddrove them to live in trees.The pressure of having bodieswas enough to melt the ironin everyone's chest.Cats invented wings for birds,pitying their skinny legs.There are still enough of them on earthto make a gumbo of beginnings. 2.We are not at war anymore.Nothing reeks.There are no timeshares left to claim;we offered the enemyenough tulips to block the sun.Tulips flocked into blossom,tulips ground into powder,tulips growing in the bellies of the desert.There is enough sandto fill factories. Imagine the pearls!Imagine dust in everyone's chest,and around each fleck, a lumpof milky sap. The groundis still burning; the sand is black glass,black milk for the childrenof women, inseminatedby the black fire of beginnings. 3.The first tree produced tomatoeslarger than hedgehogs.When they fell, Serpent crawled insideto lay her eggs. When they fell,Man crawled inside to look for Woman.The eggs were soft as flesh.Man slept. Woman gathered the tomatoesand threw them in a pot.Man was inside. Serpent was inside.Tormented by the boil,serpent crawled between Man'slegs and buried herself to the stomach.Man spends his life trying to pullSerpent from between his legs.For this, Man is given hands. 4.The first child grew from a pit.PEACH SEED TOSSED INTO HOLEGROWS ARMS AND LEGS,Genesis Weekly printed Thursday.MAN EVOLVES FROM HOMONYM,countered The Daily Bang.Pity they didn't send poets to the moon.There are lunar surfacesthat look like flounders from earth.Plato didn't want poets in his republic,not because we imitate truth,but because we are most susceptibleto daemonic influence. Milosz'sinvisible guest comes in and out at will.Hire a poet, end up with a golem.The only place we ever end upis the beginning. The only placewe ever end up is the beginning.

THEY'LL BE CONTACTING ME

first appeared in Mississippi Review Online

One of the managers asked me what I would do after I died, and then they stared at me, two hard-boiled eggs in little collared green shirts and soft mouths that sucked the air like goldfish on ceramic tile. I imagined cutting them both in half just to see the yellow-gray moons of their yolk.The second manager was three sizes too large and fired his phlegm-hums at point blank range. I told them I would rot or burn, maybe leak out a pungent aroma, maybe grin, like this, but the egg on the right cut me short. "No," he said, "would you remain loyal to our company?" And it was the way he said loyal that annoyed me,it took on shape, rising in the center.it made him sound important even though he was only the left half of a sweaty omelet."I'd be dead, I said quickly, "which is a bit like loyal," and they both nodded quietly and looked at each other,as though this was the one answer they had been expecting. We sat there for a run of the mill eternity and sniffed each other's dread. Then they both shot their damp hands out at me and each cocked up one eyebrow."Thank you," said the first.

BIO

Martin Rock Is a poet, editor, and educator living in Brooklyn. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Conduit, Salamander, The Tampa Review, La Petite Zine, Forklift, Ohio, DIAGRAM, Mississippi Review Online, and Tuesday; an Art Project among other journals. His collaborative chapbook with Phillip D. Ischy, Fish, You Bird, was published by Pilot Books. He holds an MFA from New York University and teaches composition and literature at Berkeley College. He edits for Epiphany, a Literary Journal and Loaded Bicycle, a new online journal of poetry, translation, and art. He is the recipient of a scholarship to the Port Townsend Writers Conference and will be on faculty for the Jackson Hole Writers Conference. After having lived in Japan for three and a half years, he is in the process of translating a book of Masato Tomobe's poetry from the Japanese.
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POEMS

POEMS ONLINEPodcast of reading, InDigest Blog2 Poems, La Petite Zine2 Poems, Jellyroll3 Poems, InDigest Magazine2 Poems, Sixth FinchAnimals of North America, DIAGRAM4 Poems, At-Large Magazine 2 Poems, Mississippi Review Online (now BLIP)The First Human Speaks of Catfish, 13th Warrior Review

PRESS

INTERVIEWS/ ARTICLESPoetry Foundation Harriett BlogWe Are Homer Blog NewPages Blog

LITMAGS

LITMAGSAction, YesAgriculture ReaderAt-Large MagazineConduitDIAGRAMelimaeEpiphanyFENCEForklift, OhioFouGulf CoastInDigestJellyrollJubilatLa FoveaLa Petite ZineLITLoaded BicycleLungfull!Mississippi ReviewNANO FictionNo, DearOctopusS U P E R M A C H I N E Sixth FinchTuesday; an Art ProjectWashington SquareThe Wolf

BLOGS

BLOGSExtra Illustration ProjectI Am a Natural WonderPoetry ComicsPoets and PuppetsTHEthe Poetry BlogWe Are Homer

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