John Paul Martinez is a Filipino-Canadian poet writing out of the Midwest. He was selected as a semifinalist for the 2019 Djanikian Scholars Program and a finalist for the 2018 Black Warrior Review Poetry Contest. His poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and is forthcoming or has appeared in DIALOGIST, Redivider, wildness, Nashville Review, Figure 1, and elsewhere. He holds a BA in Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin—Madison.





John Paul Martinez




Self-Portrait as Wind Turbine

in the corners of nowhere Wisconsin great white obelisks of perpetual motion stand in line to capture the precious air it’s the only place where the cattle dwarf the farmer towering examples of modern technology dependent on a singular purpose spin, spin, spin, spin, and sometimes rest in the center of Wisconsin’s capital I write poems and sleep little remain ranked outside to test each breath watching my night stretch longer than a wind blade I store my heart in a thick nacelle and pray towards the pulling moon seeking my gentlest wind shear chasing every available jet stream to get me off the ground and running I learn how to make waves in the sky without the world’s notice


This poem is part of a series of self-portraits in which each is represented by a quiet subject: something that resides exclusively in the background and disturbs minimally, noticed only at a person’s choosing. The first half of this poem was written after driving through a small wind farm interspersed throughout a few acres of farmland near the Wisconsin/Iowa State Line; I was drawn by the scene of field crops loomed with a dozen or so turbines. The second half was written during a particularly sleepless period.



Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.