Fire Mobile is a poetic narrative beginning with the joining of two loves and culminating in a new life. Its sonnets speak from the voice of a man observing the mysterious, transformative, unpredictable progression of his beloved’s pregnancy. The mundane and the bizarre are domains playfully traversed in its pages as well as profound love and an awe for the creative capacities of the human body.
“Each of these pregnancy sonnets is, itself, a pregnancy — dense with love, discomfort, beauty and strangeness. Meticulously syllabic but not metrical, the poems follow their own clock while keeping one eye on the calendar, measuring transformation in quatrains and trimesters. And each one, when it has run its familiar course and delivered its final flourish, has given something new to the world — an original song “ ‘some months rehearsed / in the waters of you.’ ”
- Eric McHenry
New York Times book reviewer
author, Potscrubber Lullabies
“Matthew Porubsky writes into the ‘answer that spins secretly in plain sight’ when praising the mystery of the life force through poetically unfolding the pregnancy of his beloved. FIRE MOBILE, a powerful collection of sonnets, calls us to reclaim the beauty of the human body, gestation and birth. What makes this book particularly astonishing is that its generative and generous celebration of the sacred feminine was written by a man, who, in writing this, shows us the hard-won and shining soul of real love.”
- Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
Poet Laureate of Kansas
Please become more familiar with the artist of this book, Stella Robbins (Sandy Morgan) at her website. She never ceases to impress!
Purchase Fire Mobile
poems from Fire Mobile (the pregnancy sonnets)
(Weighing One Ounce)
It seems an intangible abstract now,
like a step off a cliff, an arm asleep
as blood returns to the veins’ steady creep,
the watery shadow of old window
pane glass. If there were a window to see
inside, perhaps it would be more defined,
less rehearsed words to hide ideas behind,
a picture other than what might just be
more tummy reflected in the mirror.
This view would rearrange reasons, give sight
to feeling, proof to the sickness, delight
to pains. Underneath this tiny parlor
you could measure its fit in your cupped hand
exact, line to line, where head and feet land.
originally in Freefall 2007
(Passively Outfitting the Room)
You’ve kept the baby’s room quite bare, afraid
that you may jinx the whole thing, but you smiled,
taking the knitted sweater your aunt made
along with a white changing table piled
with wipes and lotions. You gladly received
a sock monkey from my mother inside
the family crib and you hardly believed
my sister’s early present as you eyed
the white onesie holding its shoulders by
fingertips in front of you, first seeing
the image to come and fill that you ply
fixed within. You put these in drawers, being
nervous to stare, and leave the room’s door closed,
for now keeping the mystery unclothed.
originally in Coal City Review 2009
(Bath Tub Message)
In the water, hot and quiet, you wait
unmoving for an internal motion.
Your feet are set steady and arms out straight,
floating. You stifle any vibration
of breathing, neck deep, as you stare beyond
your breasts to your silent belly watching
for the slightest sight of ripples. This bond
of water and skin, the subtle matching
of wombs, will let you see inside at last.
Suddenly, you feel a fret from within
then see the swell of gentle circles cast
and spreading in a path of echoes thin
and mute. Thoughtful and slow, sinking displaced,
you realize warmth has you both embraced.
originally in Coal City Review 2009
(Idol Worship)
The position is a perpetual
variable focused around a faint
percussion progression. A ritual
of taps in a steady pulse starts to paint
broad strokes, watery and blooming, along
your ridges and trim. It’s never had such
resonance throughout – trembles that prolong
instances past instances. A warm touch
of breath leads the beat to timpani speed,
rolling over itself at a tumbling
pace, bulging peripheral views that lead
into the hazy summit. The climbing
lifts to air, and floats on a rapid hum
of moist skims to that final, deepest drum.
originally in Blue Island Review 2011
(The Skeleton Inside)
There is surely more to it than the sharp
elbows and knees that grind along sinews
and push momentary ruts in tissue
stretched tight, hip to hip, the fashion of harp
strings plucked. Another body, similar
to your own, is inches beneath your skin.
A compression of bones tempered as tin,
aged in rich liquid with the peculiar
glint of a laced shine. The head, chest and each
lanky limb has a bending resilience
to contract further to slip through the dense
plies of your layers. The tremble of its reach
is held and balled before you until forced
light gathers to lead down the plotted course.
originally in Blue Island Review 2010
