E. MARTIN PEDERSEN - POEMS

E. Martin Pedersen, a San Franciscan, has lived in eastern Sicily for over 35 years. He teaches English at the local university. His poetry has appeared in Alexandria Quarterly, Frigg, Muddy River Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and others. Martin is a 2011 alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

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I Was Dead
​

​I was dead
            but I could still see
I saw blue skies
            and I waited for the crash sound
It didn't come, only a bump
            then I was born
You held me so gently
            my only feeling was fortune
I slept against your skin
            warm and fragrant like toast
Every day someone watching out for me
            for a change
For the first time --
 
Delicious new life of wonder
            and to think
I was dead.
 

Colonoscopy
​

Shine your light
Shine your little light
Shine your little light on me
 
I’ll have an evacuation cocktail, please
One part rotten fish heads
One part swamp water
A dash of copper mine trailings
shaken not stirred
Then I’d like to sit down please
Sometimes I feel like
an exploding sack of
s. ampersand hashtag t. exclamation mark
So explode man, share, out of control, guts everywhere
Then later, when I’m tired of all that
fed up (I wish)
I’ll lie on my left side
and watch television
Discovery Channel
              Hey look, that’s me
              I’m a little star.
 

Avoiding Mirrors
​

​My daydreams and nightmares have the same plot
with different protagonists or the same
people from my past life passed over on the other shore
people (see above for their real names) showing up on my doorstep
now that I finally have a doorstep
the horror and the joyous pathos
 
Wither they show up or not they do
in the playhouse up here
torment me as a hint
as to after many many years
I need to step out of the bath of my past self and stories
face the mirror
wipe off the clouds
not be afraid.
 

The Book of a Thousand Poems
​

​All day I wanted to finish
my book of a thousand poems
but now that I have, I'm perplexed
what's next.
 
Reading my book of a thousand poems
how many left to go, the number and percentage
calculation
bear down.
 
I look constantly away
like reading while waiting for a friend
that I want to see
before she sees me.
 
Was my brain damaged in excesses of youth
that it won't stay put on the page
I'll read you again the first time
I blinked.
 
Will I mature as an individual
eventually become an adult
and have powers and abilities
to burn holes in poems.
 
They were difficult and reading them twice
wasn't enough
they flew like summer starlings
around my temple.
 
 

Charlene’s golf ball story
​

​Charlene lived on the 17th hole
I guess that's possible
she had a cat
that untrained would walk out onto the golf course
and steal balls
approach the green on 17
as the kids giggled as
kitty fetched Wilson Topflite one by one
under the fence into the yard.
The balls were kept in a bucket and one day
when the bucket was full
some fat cigarman sliced one
over near them tricksters
looking through knotholes
they threw the whole bucket out onto the course
of course.