Marc Alan Di Martino

Marc Alan Di Martino is a Pushcart-nominated poet, translator and author of the collection Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His work appears in Baltimore Review, Rattle, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, Valparaiso Poetry Review and many other journals and anthologies. His second collection, Still Life with City, is forthcoming from Pski’s Porch. He lives in Italy.

Perseid

I zigzagged the hospital parking lot
meteor-watching, my wife supine inside,
our daughter inside her. Craning my neck
around the mesh of streetlamps overhead
I crosshaired moving targets. One by one
they fizzled out just as they had the night
of our first kiss. Ten, eleven, we’d counted,
whiskey hot as harissa on our breath.
Our daughter, born bewitched by the Perseids,
turns eleven tomorrow and the showers
rebound now as we decorate the yard
with streamers. Eleven eleven-year-old girls
are coming over to celebrate her life
with an eleven-candled chocolate layer cake.
This time I want to be ready for it, all
of it, and I don’t want to miss a single thing.