Martin Lammon has recently completed a new collection of poems, All Souls, featuring poems previously published in The Atlanta Review, Chelsea, The Gettysburg Review, Mid-American Review, among other journals, and most recently in Hotel Amerika, Margie Review, and The Southern Review. His poem "Sesitina Qué Triste" is part of that collection. He has also recently finished a memoir about living in Costa Rica, and several earlier versions of chapters from that book were previously published in such journals as Black Warrior Review, The Chattahoochee Review, and The Iowa Review. Zone 3 published “The Body Electric,” which was among the “Notable Essays of 2008,” selected by Robert Atwan and listed in The Best American Essays 2009 anthology. Lammon teaches at Georgia College & State University, where he holds the Fuller E. Callaway/Flannery O'Connor Chair in Creative Writing, directs the MFA Program there, and edits the journal Arts & Letters.
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Sestina Qué Triste
Say la piedra.
What pity
In a stone? Loss,
Perhaps, no más,
No menos. Squint, you miss
La ultima luz.
Say la luz.
Say la piedra.
In this language, pity
Abounds, and loss
Is common. We chant una más
As if we might miss
The saddest song, or miss
Una punta de la luz
So small, una piedra
So smooth, we will pity
Each other as if such loss
Were triste. Qué más,
Que más? Mucho más
Y mucho menos. I miss
Nuance, say luz,
Mean la raza, say piedra,
Mean pebble. A pity,
This meaning I’ve lost.
We live with loss
Y queremos más,
Want what we miss
Most. At night, la luz;
In flight, la piedra,
Tierra firma. Want pity
When we have no pity.
In this milagro of language, loss
Lingers on the tongue, más
O menos, and I miss
La playa, la lengua de la costa, la luz
En la mañana. I say piedra
As if I’d said pity. Say luz
As if I’d said loss . Only a word, una piedra,
Such sad syllables, what I miss la más.