Martha Silano
3 poems
**
Seductively Irrepressible Water Ouzel Warble for the English Language
Was that a hookup or a hiccup?
Were you fixing to warm me
or warn me? (Will you be my woof
to your warp?) Was that a kerchoo
or a curfew? Are you dousing
the flames, doubting our outcome?
Are we in full-swing or glottally stopped?
Are you trouble or truffle? Trusting? Lacking?
Is this a trieste or a tumble? Are you scheming
to ravish or ravage? Do you wanna weld
and welter? Do like a whelk to me?
Or am I merely wishing to be whisked?
Listen here, kitten: I’m no rickety wreck;
I’m charismatic, unastericked—all rijsttafel
and licorice. You mauvais sujet! I’m neither
dithering nor dilettante. Enter my benthic,
Betty. Swim to your swellest.
**
Let the Dead
settle comfortably into the earth;
let them discuss transformation
with the centipedes and the sow bugs,
let them walk down unfamiliar alleys,
their knack for trivia and traipsing,
their fascination with transistors,
their love of stuffed puffins,
rattling the garbage cans;
let them be the small waves
slamming pebbles,
grinding them to sand.
The dead inhabit the raised beds,
embrace the cold frames, sniff
the baking cake, pound and bounce
like hail, linger in the gutters, float
beyond Andromeda. It’s the dead who chuckle
through the mouths of crows, hold together
the muscles of frogs, will the turbulent tame.
**
Double Triptych for the Months of Nectarine and Plum
1.
She wants to be buried, says sand is cozy,
says put more here, and when I do, I like it.
I can’t even run, she says, and she’s right.
Thinks she sees a worm, but it flies away.
2.
They said they hated
flowers, didn’t want to visit
a stupid garden. They wanted
climb, slide, spin, swing,
anything but confinement in a swirl
of stonecrop, chicory, delphinium.
But then they saw the playhouse, met the kid
to hide from, then they saw the swallow
squeezing into a nest box, and the day turned
woodruff, rosemary, Japanese lilac.
3.
She wants to be X,
then O, then X. Then she wants
a bite of plum. To share
the plum. Then the horse’s bell,
the sound of breathing horse,
the breeze, a kingfisher’s call,
the plum in her hand all her own.
4.
My chip is singing, she says.
What’s it singing? I ask.
“Mary Had a Little Lamb”
and “Life is but a Dream.”
Does it dance?
No, it just sings.
5.
My favorite color’s either
black, sparkly green,
brown, no, green, no, blue,
no, you can’t brush my hair,
privacy, I need you, put me down,
go sit over there, don’t leave.
6.
This morning each child
claimed half of me. Divided
down the middle by my jacket zipper,
I lay on the floor, demanding
keep to your side. Sometimes
one would fall off, complain
it wasn’t enough, that the other
had more, that they needed to go over
just a little to balance things out,
to feel okay about going to camp.
Each with their own little piece
of mommy, who wondered
which piece was her own.
**
return to sawbuck 3.4
**
Martha Silano is the author of two books of poems, Blue Positive and What the Truth Tastes Like. New work is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, The Los Angeles Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Best American Poetry 2009. A six-time Puschart Prize nominee, Martha teaches at Bellevue College, near her home in Seattle, Washington. She blogs at http://bluepositive.blogspot.com.
**
Seductively Irrepressible Water Ouzel Warble for the English Language
Was that a hookup or a hiccup?
Were you fixing to warm me
or warn me? (Will you be my woof
to your warp?) Was that a kerchoo
or a curfew? Are you dousing
the flames, doubting our outcome?
Are we in full-swing or glottally stopped?
Are you trouble or truffle? Trusting? Lacking?
Is this a trieste or a tumble? Are you scheming
to ravish or ravage? Do you wanna weld
and welter? Do like a whelk to me?
Or am I merely wishing to be whisked?
Listen here, kitten: I’m no rickety wreck;
I’m charismatic, unastericked—all rijsttafel
and licorice. You mauvais sujet! I’m neither
dithering nor dilettante. Enter my benthic,
Betty. Swim to your swellest.
**
Let the Dead
settle comfortably into the earth;
let them discuss transformation
with the centipedes and the sow bugs,
let them walk down unfamiliar alleys,
their knack for trivia and traipsing,
their fascination with transistors,
their love of stuffed puffins,
rattling the garbage cans;
let them be the small waves
slamming pebbles,
grinding them to sand.
The dead inhabit the raised beds,
embrace the cold frames, sniff
the baking cake, pound and bounce
like hail, linger in the gutters, float
beyond Andromeda. It’s the dead who chuckle
through the mouths of crows, hold together
the muscles of frogs, will the turbulent tame.
**
Double Triptych for the Months of Nectarine and Plum
1.
She wants to be buried, says sand is cozy,
says put more here, and when I do, I like it.
I can’t even run, she says, and she’s right.
Thinks she sees a worm, but it flies away.
2.
They said they hated
flowers, didn’t want to visit
a stupid garden. They wanted
climb, slide, spin, swing,
anything but confinement in a swirl
of stonecrop, chicory, delphinium.
But then they saw the playhouse, met the kid
to hide from, then they saw the swallow
squeezing into a nest box, and the day turned
woodruff, rosemary, Japanese lilac.
3.
She wants to be X,
then O, then X. Then she wants
a bite of plum. To share
the plum. Then the horse’s bell,
the sound of breathing horse,
the breeze, a kingfisher’s call,
the plum in her hand all her own.
4.
My chip is singing, she says.
What’s it singing? I ask.
“Mary Had a Little Lamb”
and “Life is but a Dream.”
Does it dance?
No, it just sings.
5.
My favorite color’s either
black, sparkly green,
brown, no, green, no, blue,
no, you can’t brush my hair,
privacy, I need you, put me down,
go sit over there, don’t leave.
6.
This morning each child
claimed half of me. Divided
down the middle by my jacket zipper,
I lay on the floor, demanding
keep to your side. Sometimes
one would fall off, complain
it wasn’t enough, that the other
had more, that they needed to go over
just a little to balance things out,
to feel okay about going to camp.
Each with their own little piece
of mommy, who wondered
which piece was her own.
**
return to sawbuck 3.4
**
Martha Silano is the author of two books of poems, Blue Positive and What the Truth Tastes Like. New work is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, The Los Angeles Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Best American Poetry 2009. A six-time Puschart Prize nominee, Martha teaches at Bellevue College, near her home in Seattle, Washington. She blogs at http://bluepositive.blogspot.com.
Labels: 3.4, martha silano, winter 2009/2010
