Night of the Hawk: Poems

By Lauren Martin

When I have wandered long enough what am I still beholden to?

Ifá. Nature. Illness. Love. Loss. Misogyny. Aging. Africa. Our wounded planet. In this sweeping yet intensely personal collection, Lauren Martin tells the untold stories of the marginalized, the abused, the ill, the disabled—the different. Inspired by her life’s experiences, including the isolation she has suffered as a result both of living with chronic illness and having devoted herself to a religion outside the mainstream, these poems explore with raw vulnerability and unflinching honesty what it is to live apart—even as one yearns for connection.

But Night of the Hawk is no lament; it is powerful, reverential, sometimes humorous, often defiant—“Oh heat me and fill me / I rise above lines”—and full of wisdom. Visceral and stirring, the poems in this collection touch on vastly disparate subjects but are ultimately unified in a singular quest: to inspire those who read them toward kindness, compassion, and questioning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Release date: May 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9781647426590

Lauren Martin

Lauren Martin is a psychotherapist, poet, and devoted Ìyânífá. She studied poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. She spent years writing without submitting her work due to a long shamanic journey that led her to both Ifá and the writing of this collection of poems. Lauren lives in Oakland, California.

Book preview

ESSENTIALS OF MAN

Give me peace

Give me hope

Give me a soul

From which to stand

OSCEOLA

I dream

Of Africa

When I wake

And watch the sun

Refract beyond the large

Schoolyard Oak

Sitting West

Where the Ravens nest

And the Hawks seek their young

I dream of a strong woman

And solitude

The sounds of nature

Giving way to perspective

Nobility of spirit

Being recognized

By a strong man

Wanting debates

And nights of passion

As unafraid

Of female intellect

And post menopausal

Sensuality as

A great hunt

AS THE BOW BREAKS

As the bow breaks

I refuse to be broken

I have been beaten

Many times by men

By eleven

I knew it well

The feeling of steeling myself

Against the lies of others

Some fire of dignity

That has always lived within me

Far from the stretches of fear

Finally outpaced and trapped

you go small

as embers burn

Rage ignites

At the unfairness of that control

For I am not confused

I am able to accept being this clear

In the face of your confusion about me

Forced by survival to be