Marc Alan Di Martino

Bibliophilia
   In memoriam Phil Lyman 

He begged for Austen, Kipling, Henry James, 
a flower on his windowsill arranged
to catch the morning light, a book or two
on Joyce--and yes, il miglior fabbro, too-- 
the works of Ogden Nash and M. de Sade 
(unorthodox, but such requests are made 
in end-of-life facilities). He read
each one, demanded more: The Bodley Head 
Reader, Auntie Mame and The Ginger Man, 
Anatole France, The Life of Horace Mann. 
In short, he lived the way he always had 
before old age confined him to the bed
on which he’d die--somewhere in Book XIII 
of Galen’s Treatise on a Ruptured Spleen. 

Marc Alan Di Martino is the author of the collections Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City Press, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Cider Press Review, Rattle, THINK, West Review and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His translation Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco will be published by World Poetry Books in 2024. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.