MiPOesias Magazine

Rita Maria Martinez is a native Floridian living in Fort Lauderdale. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including Ploughshares, Mangrove, MIPOesias, Gulf Stream Magazine, Street Weekly, Gargoyle, Diagram and Tigertail: A South Florida Poetry Annual. She also has poetry forthcoming in the eighth edition of Stephen Minot’s Three Genres: The Editing of Poetry, Fiction and Drama (forthcoming by Prentice Hall); in the anthology Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (forthcoming by Soft Skull Press), edited by Denise Duhamel; and in the anthology Burnt Sugar (forthcoming by Simon and Schuster), edited by Lori Hijuelos and Oscar de la Hoja. Martinez divides her time between teaching at Nova Southeastern University and helping coordinate the Spoken Word Café during the annual Miami Book Fair International.

Principes Negros

These red quivering emissaries

wrapped in transparent cellophane paper

are delivered to room 1350, the publications office.

This is the first time you send flowers.

I descend the escalators cradling them like Miss America.

A unibrowed stranger says congratulations

and I feel vulnerable traipsing around with

these garnet ambassadors in broad daylight.

While riding the Metro they rest on my lap,

stretched out and languishing as if desiring a lover.

The thorns sheared. The foliage peeps

out of its cellophane shell, fronds lightly brushing

my elbows. Approaching my car I feel that if I bend

the wrong way the buds will bob backwards and snap off.

I drive like there is a baby in a car seat beside me.

You have sent these messengers because I am afraid

of getting married. At home I undress

them, soak their fatigued stems in a clear vase.

The florist has inserted transparent cylinders

full of water at the base of each stem— liquid capsules preventing

your silent envoys from wilting and drooping prematurely.