~MARTHA SILANO~

BECAUSE I KNEW

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you’d love my informational mobile made of 
cold-snap-thwarting cotechini, because I knew  

that rather than interview a bolas spider, you’d 
dial me up on the last pay phone, the one out back  

of Tacoma Screw. Because I knew it was me-n-you 
like a cashmere-wool blend sock and the pair of leopard- 

print panties it’s electrically sticking to, I was wishing 
for no red lights because you’re Fantasia Fun Park,  

the Red Dragon Casino, Rock and Roll’s Greatest Hits. 
Because you remind me harlequin bugs are doing it  

in the delicata starts. I thought I’d hum you a little oh 
say can you see, and you’d know this wasn’t drunk driving,  

more like drunk diving, drunk thriving. And you’d see too 
that the arrows on the Exit-Only signs are heading straight  

for our Earth’s own heart, that cupid’s arrows are everywhere, 
desire the one thing uniting us all—leaf hopper, flamboyant
 
flower beetle, roly poly bug, and also whoever painted Hot 
Sexy Baristas! on the take-out window of Sweet Shots. 

Though we tell ourselves our top speed’s a little faster 
than a kangaroo, a little slower than an elephant, 

how do we really know, with our blinkers on, untethered,
whisking through endless space? On our way  

to toll booths, picket lines, to cutting boards on which 
we’ll chop hundreds of onions, crying, wiping our eyes,  

crying as we arrive in cookie cutter neighborhoods with our rags
and our vacuums, speeding along at 70,000 miles per hour,
  
even as the engine’s cooling in our last-chance parking lot. 
Because I knew you’d understand this—you, me, our sibling 

earthlings, our sibling citizens of this swirly world, 
which only grows bluer the farther away from it we get.

 

© by Martha Silano