Because I stole the horse’s reins,
my gelding elicits a still-tail silence.
Because silence is a constant,
the loon will not call, the lens
bears down on a looted nest.
Soon the net, soon enlisted
to sorrow. Soon a ton of solo,
Leo called into action.
The stolen, the loosened:
I’m nil with them; my muzzle
a lost canoe in Orion (oceans
have nothing on Draco,
on Cassiopeia’s listing ).
Cetus breaches while a saw-whet
no no nos. What’s the weight
of Cygnus? How long
‘til my castles topple, sing
a crash of high-stakes half-
notes? O hydra, O heron, O howling
hound not howling–-the whole dang lot
of tinsel and ills, lilt of every living cell.
Martha Silano’s books are What the Truth Tastes Like, Blue Positive, and The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, chosen by Campbell McGrath as the winner of the 2010 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in Paris Review, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2009, and elsewhere.