POETRY SPOTLIGHT:
MARLIN M. JENKINS

MARLIN M. JENKINS READS THREE POEMS

“Science hasn’t confirmed that watching TV will damage your eyes,”
“as kids we played super mario 64 and dropped baby penguins off of cliffs just because we could,” & “Portrait of Hansel and Gretel as Lost Black Family”

Science hasn’t confirmed that watching TV will damage your eyes

---

It was true: dangerous to sit so close

to the TV screen back when TVs emitted

radiation, but now, the advice—don’t sit too close

to the TV—is barely scientific. True, also,

that before LCD you could touch the screen

to feel its solid glass, curved, electric fuzz kissing

small fingertips against, for example, the plain colors

and limited polygons of mid-90s Nintendo games.

But today, press too hard and the layer

under screen appears to bleed, shifts like fresh paint

and if only we could, like Super Mario,

step into and beyond that landscape barrier—

find there a war we could remedy,

a penguin to race, a world of coins

and cannons that could launch us as far

as we’d like to go.

Of course we stayed close—

loved the hope in how a plumber could liberate

a kingdom; how our power could rise from

rescued stars or the change of a hat; how an eye

could be an enemy tracking our movement

vanquished by our closeness, our quick-footed

circles around the circular monster

until, dizzy, he collapses into himself, pays what he owes.

BONUS CONTENT

Three poems from Jenkins’s Chapbook,
Capable Monsters (Bull City Press, 2020)

TALL GRASS

---

Boy-man whose breath is prayer

ready to breathe life

into video game cartridge.

 

Boy-man who don’t eat lunch

at school if the lunch ain’t free

this year, whose hunger

 

pastes eyes to closely-clutched

gray-scale screen all through church.

Boy-man proclaimed man

 

of the house—with second-hand clothes

from black garbage bag, used copy

of Pokémon Blue Version.

 

First chosen pokémon: bulbasaur—

pocket-monster with back-bulb

which grows like the dividing cells

 

mutating in granddad’s lungs. Sprouting

ivy. Boy-man briefly second-guesses choice:

perhaps instead of bulbasaur

 

should have picked squirtle: shell 

which would grow and sprout

water-cannons, defeat each enemy

 

through baptism. He learns

to deal, make do—like the bankruptcy,

like the block, like the non-profit boxes

 

that provided Christmas morning.

Boy-man whose bulbasaur provides

protection; he knows

 

from what he was told by the pokémon

professor you don’t walk through

the tall grass without a pokémon,

 

like he knows from mother

you don’t walk outside alone at night.

The boy-man and his new

 

green friend—bulbasaur who was

a bulbasaur until he wasn’t: evolved

into ivysaur and the pre-plant

 

of sealed bulb became

flower, leaf, vine. And then, finally:

venusaur—titan with a tree 

 

rooted to his back, the ability

to alter sunlight, channel

its energy. Boy-man wishes

 

himself this world of trouble

and wonder: cyber-world 

where you battle until you can’t

 

but all healing takes is one nurse

and six seconds—where

the tall grass grows and is never

 

cut down. If only he could be

more like a grown bulbasaur: enough

grown green to photosynthesize—

 

never be in hunger, always be in bloom.

POKÉDEX ENTRY #7: SQUIRTLE

---

The shell is soft when it is born.
It soon becomes so resilient, prodding fingers will bounce off it.

boy you soft  you gay  you ain’t shit 

      you awkward ain’t real  fake-ass sad boy 

            oreo-ass goodie goodie  know-it-all nerd 

                 doin too much  let us tell you ‘bout yourself 

                     we see your fear  like how you sit by yourself

                         and tremble like how you think you too good

                           to have any friends like that time skating a boy 

                              skated close  tried to pass you and then by reflex 

                                you blocked his swinging arm he looked at you

                                  like your gay ass was trying to hold his hand 

                                  

                                  it is not that there is shell with me inside it 

                                it is that i and shell are part and participle 

                             compartmented coat to coax both poison 

                          and antidote from how the phrases turn 

                      i begun and i begin  i be in this resilient 

                skin  and all my clenched fingers ready  

         and all my sweat reflective and all my 

    shields sharpened and all my shell 

a hardened rampage of rubber 

some theories on origins 

---

a pokémon can only say its name 

or 

it gets its name from the only thing

it can say

 

if the second case

then call me whine call me race

call me lonely monster nerdy trivia 

 

from the time i was born i was 

ready to know useless knowledge

to overthink an olive pit to obsess 

and obsess repeat repeat

 

i was born and then soon

putting barrettes in my hair 

climbing the tallest cabinets

to stuff cheerios in my diaper

 

i was born not with this language 

with words for cereal or game or pixel

or pain

 

i grew and learned through symbols 

 

gave my family 

new names 

 

left pallet town’s square

of seclusion and there is much

the professor didn’t tell me

about a world called kanto

about all the other regions

i could've flown to if i'd known

 

a visit home reveals to me

how i am a young version 

of my shared-name father

we sit the same way

legs crossed stand the same way

with hands pressing the lower back

i noticed neither similarity

until it was said to me

 

when i was born 

i did not know who my people were

and so i hated everyone who knew where

they belonged but hated more 

everyone coated in a shiny mirror

everyone who wanted the best for me

everyone who chose me before

i could choose them

 

canon is unclear about who writes the pokédex

perhaps the professor notes from field work

before pallet town locked him in

a single room and each night 

he stares into the mouth

of the river counting bubbles 

and wishing each is a live creature

 

or is it just the adventuring child

jotting hyperbolic notes

while camped in the tall grass

 

maybe it's basically wikipedia with all

us trainers breeders battlers researchers

fashionistas filling in the legends

told to us from oral histories

 

ash asks the pokédex for nomenclature

it tells him what everything is

and he believes it

 

he calls his pikachu pikachu

and when pikachu responds:

pika pi pikachu the only lonely

vocabulary between his electric

cheeks red with innocence

he is saying human human human

 

i was born a human

if we start that basic

i was born and celebrate it

once a year i was born

 

and oh i remember i am thankful

and so i am sure to say i am thankful

 

my sisters call me not by my name

now it is brother

growing up it was just boy

 

a friend texts me calls me love

instead of my name 

and i'm happy i was born

i was born in this skin

as this species and these

funny semi-fluid categories

and i learned i learned 

these preoccupations this pain

this poking in my nerve endings

 

i was born and my name is not

what my mother

wanted to call me 

 

in large crowds i think

i hear my name and i know not

what to say except

to shout it back

---

Marlin M. Jenkins was born and raised in Detroit and currently lives in Minnesota. The author of the poetry chapbook Capable Monsters (Bull City Press, 2020) and a graduate of University of Michigan's MFA program, his work has found homes with Indiana Review, The Rumpus, Waxwing, and Kenyon Review Online, among others. You can find him online at marlinmjenkins.com.