Echoes Wands Hands Children
Watch an hour at the lake, the lake becomes the hour. Becomes the hour, null & soundless. Break of day, the sky
Undimming, clouds on the horizon a mistform ceiling. Soil like black cake crumbling down the bluff (an evenness
To the breaking). You say, The lake looks like Jupiter. I say, It looks like an ultrasound. You say, What’s that? & I explain
Echoes / wands / hands / children. Coming back from the Collective, we sit side by side on the bluff, feet kicking.
After the winter bombings, school is on an indefinite break. I’m out of work. We keep up our lessons at the park.
From memory, you can name seventeen ships wrecked in the lake: Lady Elgin, Appomattox, Australasia, Continental—
You teach me a new wreck: Breakawaves—a lumber ship bound for Muskegon. I teach you the future perfect tense.
By the time your sister’s born, what thousand lives will you have lived? I will have turned thirteen, you recite, I will have
Helped you & Mom paint the nursery. By the time I turn eighteen, I will have grown seven inches. I will have made the soccer team.
If by then there’s still a team. If by then there’s still an if. Should the conditional break, will our words have held
A glimpse of hope (like a trellis to a climbing rose)? A spell or willing-on? With five months until your sister is born
I see a hunger in your eyes / to learn quicker than time allows / to break & remain unbroken / to teach her how—
Nick Martino is a poet and teacher from Milwaukee. He is the author of Scrap Book (Alice James Books, 2026), winner of the 2024 Alice James Editors’ Choice Award. His poems are published or forthcoming from Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, Poetry Daily, and The Southern Review, among others. He has received support and fellowships from Sewanee Writers Conference, The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Community of Writers. A finalist for the 2024 Sewanee Review Poetry Prize, he holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine where he received the Excellence in Poetry Prize. He lives in LA.