Two Poems by Martha Silano

Postcard from Some Unknown Part of My Brain

that may be missing an enzyme. Missive from I believed
my version of ruse and ruin. It’s true: at boulevards I seek out
the craziest donuts, Bear Mountain Bavarian, Triple Blitz Crunch.
Everywhere I turn, the tulips are redder than the Spanish word

for blood. Everywhere the curbs are crumbling (don’t go barefoot).
Everywhere: prosecco fountains empty into cruise-able rivers.
I want the dead to be what pops when I shake the bottle,
aim the cork at the hedges. What I promise is the tenderness

of a tamed tiger, a small gray cat crawling under your duvet.
Did you say permission or persimmon? Either way,
I will be your plankton, what keeps you phosphorescent.
Together let’s venture into imperishable brightness,

dimness suddenly strobing. Find a seat beside a bed
of crocuses, which you’ll remind me is where we get saffron.
Dine on and shine on. Become more than a chainsaw
and its log. At our feet the space junk of the 60s and 70s,
scraps of the lunar module that carried Neil and Buzz.
It’s true: I get mean when I don’t get my way, when I’m forced
to build a nest in the future tense, when I’m forbidden
the call of an osprey. When heat gives way to dusk.

*

Self-Appraisal at 62

Sometimes, it’s okay to ask which cracked terracotta pot,
what about this place called Earth, though sometimes
it’s okay to not ask permission to appear

in a low-cut gold-lame dress higher up the thigh than someone, somewhere,
considers appropriate. Mainly, it’s staying in your reclined movie seat
till the very last credit, till you find out who wrote every song,

including “What Was I Made For?” Such a good question! Ask yourself,
and I will too. But mostly? Adventures in vexing. Dostoevsky-ishly
nuanced. Feeling more at home in my bosom-buddy body,

yet wrapped in every glass of Pinot Grigio, every oops-no-SPF suntanning afternoon.
Something like inexorably, not to be discouraging. As I often say to my life partner,
would you rather the alternative? Despite juicy maggots and blowflies,

I carry on with the bubbly, my plate piled high with Pasta alla Norma,
always stop at that bakery in Cashmere with the baguette straight out
of Anjou. It’s too soon to know how bad it will get,

but for now there are sexual pleasure tools out the wazoo. I mean,
the MRI revealed a white spot on my right frontal lobe,
so I Dr. Googled: possible early sign of dementia.

SO fun! (as I like to text), but today all my Nutter Butters and Lorna Doone’s
are exactly where they belong, and I’m coming and going
like a subway line to Queens.

It’s not quite a choose your own adventure, though I do make sure
to roll down grassy hills, to stand in line for an ice cream novelty
when the rainbow van pulls up, to make a little lotus blossom

with my fingertips. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to take a long, good look
in the mirror, ask Change? Why would I change? To give the future
both the finger and a thumbs up.

*

Martha Silano is a poet living with ALS. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, and The Missouri Review, among others. Martha’s most recent collection is Gravity Assist (Saturnalia Books, 2019).