Diane Kirsten Martin grew up in Yonkers, New York, but she has lived in San Francisco since 1976. She has an M.A. in English, Concentration in Creative Writing from San Francisco State, has attended Squaw Valley, Bread Loaf, and Napa conferences and Vermont Studio Center residency. Her work has been published in New England Review, Crazyhorse, Bellingham Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, ZYZZYVA, Blue Mesa Review, Five A.M.,Third Coast, North American Review, and 32 Poems, Tar River Review, CutBank, and Nimrod. She was selected by B.H. Fairchild for second place in the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize. She works as a technical writer in the software industry.

• Lorraine Asks Should She Have a Baby
• Life Could be a Dream, Sweetheart
• Changing the Weather
• Fraught with Danger

Email Diane at dianekmartin@sbcglobal.net

Sonhar

A blue-white sky…—Elizabeth Bishop “Brazil, January 1, 1502”

I can’t translate the blue of wisteria.
There are many things of which we could not speak—

that he held me down to blue carpets, lips crushed
by obdurate teeth, that seven different purples
populate the garden; it’s the blue I need.

It was so cold that winter, he could never warm me.
My lips were blue. We were afraid, I think,

This is not about the color of memory.
I could make up something more true.

My blood. His fingers.
Blood has the salinity of oceans, but is warmer.

Dried lavender smells so blue, bees will visit the memory.

What is the Portuguese for dreaming?
The purpose of memory?

What of his friend who stops me at night
(in blue light, a hallway), saying,
He wants you. Why do you not go to him?

First published in New England Review. Copyright © Diane K. Martin

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