Clare L. Martin

What Winter Told Me
 
If I raise my voice above a whisper the world will shatter. Be patient—dark is coming. It is only for a time that you are mine. You have forgotten the names of your children, their radiant paths. In me you will know barrenness. With bleak power I cleanse an impure world. Bare yourself upon the bed and wait for the one you love. He is climbing a tree; he is taking the belt from his robe to hang himself dead. With my winds, I will cut him down, close his eyes; shake the storm out of him, for you.
 
 
 
 
Clare L. Martin is a poet-mother-wife; a graduate of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and lifelong Louisiana resident. Clare’s poetry has appeared in Avatar Review, Poets and Artists, Blue Fifth Review, and A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, among others. Her poems have been included in the anthologies: The Red Room: Writings from Press 1, Best of Farmhouse Magazine Vol. 1, andBeyond Katrina. She has been nominated for Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web (2011) for Best New Poets and Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net. Her work was selected for the 2011 Press 53 Spotlight anthology which features a select group of emerging poets and writers. Clare has written for theatre and recently served as a writer for Play. Music. Heal: a multi-disciplined collaborative theatre project of the company Acting Up (in Acadiana) which brought together actors, musicians and writers in creating a contemporary story revolving around the potential for music to heal. Clare is a Teaching Artist through the Acadiana Center for the Arts and a member of the Festival of Words Cultural Arts Collective, Inc.
 
 
 
 
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