Hustle

by David Tomas Martinez

Overview

"David Martinez is like an algebra problem invented by America—he's polynomial, and fractioned, full of identity variables and unsolved narrative coefficients. . . . Hustle is full of dashing nerve, linguistic flair, and unfakeable heart."—Tony Hoagland

The dark peoples with things:

for keys, coins, pencils
and pens our pockets grieve.

No street lights or signs,
no liquor stores or bars,
only a lighter for a flashlight,

and the same-faced trees,
similar-armed stones
and crooked bushes
staring back at me.

There is no path in the woods for a boy from the city.

I would have set fire to get off this wilderness
but Palomar is no El Camino in an empty lot,

the plastic dripping from the dash
and the paint bubbling like a toad's throat.

If mountains were old pieces of furniture,
I would have lit the fabric and danced.

If mountains were abandoned crack houses,
I would have opened their meanings with flame,

if that would have let the wind and trees lead my eyes
or shown me the moon's tiptoe on the moss—

as you effect my hand,
as we walk into the side of a Sunday night.

David Tomas Martinez has published in San Diego Writer's Ink, Charlotte Journal, Poetry International, and has been featured in Border Voices. A PhD candidate at the University of Houston, Martinez is also an editor for Gulf Coast.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936747863
Publisher:	Sarabande Books
Publication date:	04/21/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	84
File size:	441 KB

About the Author

David Tomas Martinez: David Tomas Martinez has published in San Diego Writer's Ink, Charlotte Journal, Poetry International, and been featured in Border Voices. A Ph.D. candidate at the University of Houston, Martinez is also an editor for Gulf Coast.

Read an Excerpt

ON PALOMAR MOUNTAIN

The dark peoples with things:

for keys, coins, pencils
and pens our pockets grieve.

No street lights or signs,
no liquor stores or bars,
only a lighter for a flashlight,

and the same-faced trees,
similar-armed stones
and crooked bushes
staring back at me.

There is no path in the woods for a boy from the city.

I would have set fire to get off this wilderness
but Palomar is no El Camino in an empty lot,

the plastic dripping from the dash
and the paint bubbling like a toad’s throat.

If mountains were old pieces of furniture,
I would have lit the fabric and danced.

If mountains were abandoned crack houses,
I would have opened their meanings with flame,

if that would have let the wind and trees lead my eyes
or shown me the moon’s tiptoe on the moss—

as you effect my hand,
as we walk into the side of a Sunday night.


SMALL DISCOVERIES

Sometimes I count the animals I’m not,
catalogue the ways not covered in spots

or will never struggle to climb the heated bark
of a branch extended above yellowed grass

like I struggle up a poem, with the meaning
dead in my teeth, causing the stop

of the smell of mock oranges wafting in the spring air
through curtains cottoned with chickens, their heads tilted up.

And it’s nice to add up the ways my antlers will never itch,
my pouch won’t carry a joey, never eat parasites off a shark’s

skin, nor will I be pushed out of a nest and expected to fly,
won’t have to gather bits of tin or buttons to impress a mate,

why would I ever make a nest in the walls of someone’s home:
in which I discover in the scraps of pillow fillings and bits of paper

that the Amazon will be unsustainable in a decade. I discover
turtles live on every continent except Antarctica, in any climate

they can lock shells and mate. I discover unicorns shall
come down, and the bullock with their bulls; and their land

shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.
The throne of Denmark is made from the bones of unicorns.

My childhood is a unicorn, not a salmon migrating
from salt water, not entering a white room with a cover letter

on bonded, watermarked paper—it is not the shock of fresh water
but the assimilation of all animals into taxidermy, dust, myth.


THEY SAY I TEACH ENGLISH, I SAY

If there were one person I could have a drink with, it would be Dali. He partied.
For several years now different races blamed other races for the problems they face.

All questions can come about reading James Baldwin’s “ALL QUESTIONS.”
Furthermore, superlogical is prewiser to any poststupidity on my metamatrix of ineffability.

California is by far the greatest, and I have been to Wyoming, of the 52 states.
And that is why the government put us to bed without dinner or a bedtime song.

Emily Dickinson should have worn more make-up; she might have liked marriage.
He opened me like a can of Coke, Mexican Coke, which can be recycled at any corner store.

To Gerard Manley Hopkins, and many other writers, salivation was a gift from God.
John Donne understood we have had a war between the sexes since the 1800’s.

French Surrealists are right, about what I’m unsure, but I am confident they knew.
Everyone should watch the movie Anonymous, it shows how stupid Shakespeare was.

Thomas Stern only went by T.S. because he was lazy; his glasses scream procrastinator.
Whitman was wonderful: the type of man a butterfly or bambi is drawn towards.

Since the beginning of time man has used language to communicate.
And people still, even in our advanced society, take video games for granite.

There will be a day when there are no books, when everything is read with just your eyes.
In my mind’s eye, the battle for best modern poet is between Lil Wayne and Lady Gaga.

The Great Gatsby should be handed out to high school kids in the ghetto.
Therefore, logically, Martin Luther King is a mass murderer and hypocrite.

If I ever met a kid like Holden Caulfield, I would punch him in the nose.
If only I could climb myself out from under this grave of papers to grade.


THE COST OF IT ALL

Trade is the buckle of this world's belt, shiny with dollar signs.

And I know Tibetan windstorms necklace the waking bodies of San Diego.
And I know why Muhammad Ali stood over Sonny Liston flexing.
And I know as we age our tongues grow numb from lying.
And I know in a biblical sense the gust of a humid afternoon.
And I know in chronological and alphabetical order, nothing.
And I know riding in an elevator is as close as one can get to the present.
And I know devotion and honor flicker in Atlanta strip clubs.
And I know why the Chevy Nova couldn't sell in Mejico.

Moon beams of finely threaded rope sway
in the wind. At their end, price tags.

But I wish John Lennon was born with Ringo's nose.
And I wish there were more virgins for me to find and report.
And I wish when she called, the phone protected me.
And I wish every time the moon three-point turns in the asphalt night.
And I wish on continental spots of leopards that California broke into the sea.
And I wish Che's face symbolized more than pimpled years of angst.
And I wish upon a pan with a skiing square of butter headed for steam.
And I wish to tiptoe and hear over the fence of my own teeth.

I have tried to figure the cost of it all with lint and paperclips.

SCIENTIFICALLY SPEAKING

There have
been exciting

discoveries
in the field

of me.
Many

of which,
I have

made
myself.

Table of Contents

On Palomar Mountain

I.

Calaveras

II.

To The Young
Shed
Sabbath Fe Minus
California Penal Code 266
In Chicano Park
The Only Mexican
Innominatus

III.

Rest in Motion
Small Discoveries
The Sofa King
Apotropaic
The Cost of it All
Rebecca’s Use
Coveralls

IV.

Forgetting Willie James Jones
Of Mockingbirds
Scientifically Speaking
This Bird Chest Holds a Bird’s Heart
They Say I Teach English, I Say
A Sunday March
The Mechanics of Men

Editorial Reviews

Questions of masculinity and power run throughout, and the poems feel simultaneously intimate and spectacular as the voice strikes registers of vulnerability and bravado. For all the narratives of strife the collection contains, Martinez’s poetics are anything but grim. Rather, there is a delight in language play and a lexicon that spans slang to theory.”
—Publishers Weekly

“This debut by Martinez reveals a young poet who combines the kinesthetic energy of swift movement with the quick anticipation of one whose continued survival depends largely on his ability to act. . . . This first collection serves youth, and, as with many such books, this reviewer is curious to know what Martinez’s poetry might look like once the summer of 1994 is as stale as the summer of 1969, and awaits with interest the kind of world Martinez writes once school is out for good.”
—Library Journal

“In his debut poetry collection, Martinez translates the unique nature of his autobiography with an acute ear for rhythm, transporting readers from barrio alleyways to the shipyards of San Diego to the halls of Houston academia, broaching such topics as young fatherhood, gang life, and stereotypical masculinity with refreshing candor and linguistic savvy. . . . A necessary addition to Chicano, Latino, and American poetry.”
—Booklist

"Wild syntax dances between enchanted frogs and border crossing, and between the mystery of life and the mystery of recounting it. "The world brims with signs," Martinez writes, and in his hands the landscape of the past keeps being open to rereading....There are many raw and rich moments in this book.... Perhaps there is no way to make grief into a diamond. But Martinez has made something rare, and living, and glittering nonetheless."
—NPR, "All Things Considered"

“Growing up in a broken home, living in a barrio, and joining a gang did not stop Martinez from transcending the low expectations of his troubled youth. The current Ph.D. candidate nurtured those raw experiences into sophisticated material that informs his startling poems.”
—BuzzFeed, “The 14 Must-Read Works of Chicano Literature”



“Questions of masculinity and power run throughout, and the poems feel simultaneously intimate and spectacular as the voice strikes registers of vulnerability and bravado. For all the narratives of strife the collection contains, Martinez’s poetics are anything but grim. Rather, there is a delight in language play and a lexicon that spans slang to theory.”
—Publishers Weekly

“This debut by Martinez reveals a young poet who combines the kinesthetic energy of swift movement with the quick anticipation of one whose continued survival depends largely on his ability to act. . . . This first collection serves youth, and, as with many such books, this reviewer is curious to know what Martinez’s poetry might look like once the summer of 1994 is as stale as the summer of 1969, and awaits with interest the kind of world Martinez writes once school is out for good.”
—Library Journal

“In his debut poetry collection, Martinez translates the unique nature of his autobiography with an acute ear for rhythm, transporting readers from barrio alleyways to the shipyards of San Diego to the halls of Houston academia, broaching such topics as young fatherhood, gang life, and stereotypical masculinity with refreshing candor and linguistic savvy. . . . A necessary addition to Chicano, Latino, and American poetry.”
—Booklist

"Wild syntax dances between enchanted frogs and border crossing, and between the mystery of life and the mystery of recounting it. "The world brims with signs," Martinez writes, and in his hands the landscape of the past keeps being open to rereading....There are many raw and rich moments in this book.... Perhaps there is no way to make grief into a diamond. But Martinez has made something rare, and living, and glittering nonetheless."
—NPR, "All Things Considered"

“Growing up in a broken home, living in a barrio, and joining a gang did not stop Martinez from transcending the low expectations of his troubled youth. The current Ph.D. candidate nurtured those raw experiences into sophisticated material that informs his startling poems.”
—BuzzFeed, “The 14 Must-Read Works of Chicano Literature”

From the Publisher