Bowl

By Valerie Martínez Valerie Martinez

Turn it over and look up

into the sphere of heaven.

The tracery is lucent,

light seeping through to write,

white-ink your face, upturned.

Swing it below

and it's a cradle of blue water,

the sea, a womb.

A mixing bowl

for Babylonian gods.

Here, they whirl up the cosmos.

Pick it up and your hands

form a pedestal,

and all who drink

contain the arcs

of body and the universe—

and between them,

no imaginable tear or distance.

Source: World to World (The University of Arizona Press, 2004)

Biography

Poet, translator, teacher, playwright, librettist, and collaborative artist Valerie Martínez was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She earned a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from the University of Arizona. Her books of poetry include Absence, Luminescent (1999), World to World (2004), And They Called It Horizon (2010), the limited-edition chapbook This is How it Began (2010), and the book-length poem, Each and Her . . .

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