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Nick Martino

@nick-martino.bsky.social

62 followers 66 following 2 posts

Poet & teacher from Milwaukee SCRAP BOOK (Alice James Books, 2026)

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Nick Martino @nick-martino.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

So grateful to @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social for publishing this poem, one of my favorites in the new book

Reposted by Nick Martino

Gabrielle Bates @gabriellebates.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

This new love poem by Nick Martino (just came out in Passages North) is so beautiful—perfect music

LOVE POEM
You watched your first deer die when you were six.
You watched the slotted eye-light was there and then gone-but that's not right, is it? Having seen death open like night-blooming jasmine, the hour of its unsticking blue and slow?
It's late. Moonlight
waterfalls the plastic blinds. I give you the bottle of Red Label, you give me the dab rig. You light the nail for me.
Your resin paints my voice shut like a basement window.
It's an evening of gifts: I hate this feeling in my lungs but I love the name you give to shatter. Yes,
I know you have pills for later, long after I've fallen asleep.
I know I'll wake to check if you're still breathing—
Staring down the dark, breathless for the rising of your chest.