Blood on the Fog

The poems in Blood on the Fog erupt from Tongo Eisen-Martin’s revolutionary zeal, but this collection is more than a simple manifesto. While anchored in socialist critique, these poems engage a wide range of political and social issues, including imperialism, racism and white supremacy, and police and the carceral state. The poet is candid about his radicalism: “Will I be tied face to face with the country I murder.” 

Though clearly drawing influence from the Beats and the San Francisco Renaissance, for this San Francisco poet the past is no source of nostalgia. In these poems, the horrors of U.S. history—murdered activists, lynch mobs, and other atrocities—are not so much recounted as vomited up. While Eisen-Martin does not rule out violence altogether —“They lean rifles on shelter walls / They agree with me and call it literature”—his focus only highlights its ubiquity, especially in a capitalist and racist state (the metallic clinking of both coins and bullets is a frequent motif in these poems). For Eisen-Martin, appeals to violence and revolution are rooted in a desire for transformation that takes on spiritual weight: “A slave deck blossoms sweet baby Easter blood.” Here, the poet skillfully deploys religious symbols in a compact line comprised of only eight words—with stabbing trochees finishing the clause off—to conjure an impressive array of relations: between Easter and the Middle Passage as transformative ordeals, between the death-cult aspects of Christianity and slavery as crucifix. Even “sweet” and “blood” echo field songs and the blues. He’s being sardonic, but he is also arranging a meaningful complex of cultural associations.

Death, no doubt, is the end point, and if revolution looks forward to anything, it is to that: “america may clean my dead body, but will never include me.” It’s a difficult conclusion, but nothing about these poems is easy. One gets the feeling that any other approach—at least in Eisen-Martin’s America—would be grossly disingenuous.