Polaroid: Prison Visit

Nick Martino

July 15, 1989

Silence sends my father Silence reads Silence mushrooms through Silence lurks like Silence holds Silence pauses for Silence floats Silence tilts my father's head Silence sends my father a year's worth of salt ashes silk Silence reads in the bunk above follows the cinder Silence mushrooms through the waiting on visitation day my father s lips blue of Silence lurks like river ice Silence holds him- arm shoulders hands Now stay Silence pauses for the lips to thaw and Silence sets the timer. Silence floats like ice across a body of water. Silence tilts my father's head and whispers Silence sends my father off to prison. Silence packs a duffel bag, a year's worth of salt, spiders, eyelashes, corn silk, and joins him. Silence reads while he sleeps, a penlight in the bunk above. Silence follows when he rises, rides the book cart he pushes down cinder block hallways. Silence mushrooms through the waiting room on visitation day. Silence settles on the bench beside my father, slipping tulips in his fist the blue of asphyxia. Silence lurks, like a river under ice. Silence eats nothing but the crumb of his sentences. Silence holds its black instrument and poses him-Father, wrap your arm around her shoulders, and now, Mother, fold your hands like this. Perfect. Now stay like that. Silence pauses for the blue tulips to wilt, a frozen ocean thawing in his hands. Silence positions the camera on a tripod and sets the timer. Silence floats to them like a voice across a body of water. Silence tilts my father's head and whispers into his ear.

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Nick Martino is a poet and teacher from Milwaukee. His debut poetry collection Scrap Book (Alice James Books) won the 2024 Alice James Editors’ Choice Award and will be published in 2026. His poems have been published in Best New Poets, Narrative, Ninth Letter, The Boston Review, and The Southern Review, among others. A finalist for the 2024 Sewanee Review Poetry Prize, he holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine where he received the 2022 Excellence in Poetry Prize. He lives in LA.

The Southern Review

Summer 2024

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Louisiana State University

Co-Editor & Poetry Editor
Jessica Faust

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The Southern Review is one of the nation’s premiere literary journals. Hailed by Time as “superior to any other journal in the English language,” we have made literary history since our founding in 1935. We publish a diverse array of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by the country’s—and the world’s—most respected contemporary writers.

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—James Lee Burke

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