POETRY

Rationale

By Chloe Martinez     VOLUME 57 No. 1

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Because she still won’t sleep alone, you sleep deeply
with her small warm body wrapped in your arms.
Because it won’t always be so, you let it be like this.

In the night you wake and read Ferrante again, your device
giving just enough light in the dark. Because you were waiting
for something, something came to you, despite recent despair,

despite your intermittent rages. Because you were in need.
Because the world seems to be ending more than usual.
Because your child in one of her fits flailed an arm,

broke a glass all over the supermarket floor, stood alone
by a case of cured meats, weeping, refusing comfort,
watched by worried passersby. Because you were in need,

the dawn came: those colors, why even try to describe
all the colors? And the sea rising darkly to meet them—

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CHLOE MARTINEZ is a poet, a translator, and a scholar of South Asian religions. She is the author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works) and the chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press). Her poems and translations have appeared in Ploughshares, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, AGNI, and elsewhere. She works at Claremont McKenna College. Find out more at chloeAVmartinez.com.


VOLUME 57 No. 1