Martha Silano

For there is a dram. For there is a farthing. A bushel for your thoughts. A hand for your withered heights. For I have jouled along attempting to quire and wisp. For I have sized up a mountain’s meters, come down jiffy by shake to the tune of leagues and stones. For once I was your peckish darling. For once there was the measure of what an ox could plow in a single morning. For once the fother, the reed, the palm. For one megalithic year I fixed my gaze on the smiling meniscus, against the gray wall of graduated cylinder. For once I measured ten out of ten on the scale of pain. For I knew that soon I’d kiss good-bye the bovate, the hide and hundredweight. For in each pinch of salt, a whisper of doubt, for in each medieval moment, emotion, like an unruly cough syrup bottle, uncapped. For though I dutifully swallowed my banana doses, ascended, from welcome to lanthorn, three barleycorns at a time, I could not tackle the trudging, trenchant cart. For now I am forty rods from your chain and bolt. For now I am my six-sacked self.

Because it changes O’Hare to o hate, o hate, o hate — over and over, no matter how many times I retype it. O hate, like an American tune, an American fable where, yo, you can enter an o hate bathroom, take a selfie in the mirror cuz your sister wants to see the pockets of your Great American Rhinestone Jeans. Because, on a street called Viewpoint, I get home becomes I get guns, off a road on a mission to kill every squirrel-ish pedestrian. Because he was packing, concealed, threatening to use it, use his hands or feet.My feet, iamb of a son of a birch, of a brick chatting with the devil, with God, with a listener not listening. Because he’d gone bonnets, his garden bounty a faded wine, his wife’s linguine a longing for a golden ear, so I took her to the botanical gardens in my getaway car, to a fruit on a vine, but the limes went lemur, the night to nonfat, the clear to catastrophic. Because driving away from the frog man croaking hypocrite, heavenly went down like a melting hedge, a gal gone hog-tied, a fish crying, a tiger- tiger togetherness, flight or fucked, a heart, stroked, racing to its vicarious carousel, a fungus lashed to a beam gone beleaguered. Because he will kill her, that’s his plan: to kill us all. Can’t commit or commute, can’t debone his breath, can’t take his acute paranoia, chalk it up to cute. Because this here’s a Josie madhouse, a bedroom bedrock-locked. Because Blvd morphed to Bled, spirit summoned with a Ouija board. Because soap holder went love hen, though love had flown the Calycanthus like the grilled portobellos messing with his vowels. Please please, I pleaded to the pleading day. Because prayer is like a bread line, a penny for your exploded mind. Because lots of logs to you