TIMESHARE

Dawn paints the hurricane window

lavender, then lavender-gold. In the kitchen,

drinking smoke from the joint, I’ve made a habit

of burning—I watch the ember, its rope of milk

I follow down the dark of me. Half a country

twenty years away, I’m dreaming of the timeshare

in the everglades—pale aisles of cypress

glowing like taper candles, the flooded field

a brackish mirror. At the crumbling dock, dawn’s

brushstrokes of light on the water. The hours

I stared down from my bedroom window, fire

hanging from your lips like the Lord’s Prayer

your father recited at dinner with a cigarette.

As your son, having come this far on faith

I didn’t know was faith, I wanted so much

to understand you. Now I trace the memory

to understand you now I trace the memory

I didn’t know was faith

I wanted so much as your son

having come this far on faith your father

recited at dinner

with a cigarette hanging from

your lips like the Lord’s Prayer, fire

I stared down from my bedroom window

brushstrokes of light

on the water the hours

a brackish mirror at the crumbling dock

dawn’s glowing like taper candles

the flooded field in the everglades pale

miles of cypress twenty years away

I’m dreaming of the timeshare

I follow down

the dark of me half a country of burning

I watch the ember

its rope of milk

drinking smoke from the joint

I’ve made a habit of lavender

then lavender-gold in the kitchen

dawn paints the hurricane window

and the eye of the ember stares back at me.

Nick Martino is a poet and teacher from Milwaukee. His debut poetry collection, Scrap Book (Alice James Books), won the 2024 Alice James Editors’ Choice Award and will be published in 2026. His poems have been published in Best New Poets, Narrative Magazine, Ninth Letter, The Boston Review, and The Southern Review, among others. An alumnus of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Community of Writers, he holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine where he received the 2022 Excellence in Poetry Prize. He lives in LA.