After Reading There Might Be An Infinite Number of Dimensions by Martha Silano

This is what it has come to, reading poetry at midnight, during cigarette breaks. I long to go back to the sea and just stay there. These days there are hardly any spaces for rest. I read books during my little trips to the bathroom, and finish them that way. The small of my back misses your touch. I dream of places I’ve never been to: Montreaux, Cambridge, Positano. Ennio Morricone plays in the background, a tiny fragment of time.

After Reading There Might Be An Infinite Number of Dimensions
Martha Silano

I’m thinking today of how we hold it together,
arrive on time with the bottle of Zinfandel, a six-pack

of Scuttlebutt beer, how we cover our wrinkles
with Visible Lift, shove the mashed winter squash

into the baby’s mouth, how we hold it all together
despite clogged rain gutters, cracked

transmissions, a new explanation for gravity’s
half-hearted hold. I’m wondering how we do it,

comb the tangles from our hair, trim the unwieldy
camellia, speak to packed crowds about weight loss

or fractals. I’m wondering how we don’t
fall to our knees, knowing a hardened pea,

lodged in the throat, can kill, knowing
liquids are banned on all commercial flights.

Leaves fall. The baby sucks her middle fingers.
Meanwhile, the refrigerator acquires

an unexplainable leak. Meanwhile, we call
the plumber, open wide for the dental hygienist,

check each month, with tentative circlings,
our aging breasts. Somehow, each morning,

the coffee gets made. Somehow, each evening,
the crossing guard lifts fluorescent orange flag,

and a child and her father cross the glistening street.