Martinez will be the featured poet at the Open Mic at Dagny’s.
Dagny’s is located at 1600 20th Street (corner of 20th and Eye St.) on First Friday September 2nd.
Open mic Starts at 6:00pm; sign-up for open mic is 5:50pm.
Fidel A. Martinez is the author of Factory Lights (2013), An American Mythology (2011), and Ghost Stories from the Tower of Souls (2006). His work has appeared in The Bakersfield Californian, Southwest Voice, and The Levan Humanities Review. A Garces High School and California State University Bakersfield graduate, he received his Juris Doctorate in Law from Santa Clara University Law School in 1987.
Many of Fidel’s poems draw upon his heritage as a Mexican-American born and raised in Kern County. Biblical episodes, saints and angels, the strictures of the church—the common figures of Catholicism—populate his poems, often recast in a modern light. He tackles topics ranging from the pocho to the flawed, self-congratulating sense of generosity that motivates an official to keep a barrio school open.
A poem by Fidel Martinez:
Tule Fog
I have my expectations
Morning’s still trying to define itself
Out my window the fog is patient
Low and full it waits
I walk out
It clings to me like a frightened child
Cobwebs of moisture
I have trepidations
This stuff is suffocating
Like a world of ghost stories filled to bursting
Each materializing at once
Too many
Too much
Becoming accustomed so quickly
I get into my car and drive
Slowly diving in
Swearing I’m still asleep
Alone
The fog swallows me whole
Jonah
I repent wishing to be regurgitated
Someplace safe
Resurrected reborn
Somewhere far from this thick forgetting
To burn away
Fears
That define me
Martinez will be the featured poet at the Open Mic at Dagny’s. Dagny’s is located at 1600 20th Street (corner of 20th and Eye St.) on First Friday September 2nd.
Open mic Starts at 6:00pm; sign-up for open mic is 5:50pm.
