The Glacier
Issue Two
Winter 2023

I am the last loss,

the final constellation. I’ve been to Andromeda, am on my way to contemplation. The round-about looks like a jellyfish. I’m waiting to spirit, to spin. My car, caught up in the quantum, my path lit by photons. Going toward the before. Carried weirdly, like a daughter after her father has tried and failed to choke her. Cliffs of exhaust. No end to the tremors. What are the starlings coming to? I keep getting lost. What does it mean when you sneeze three times? Vacuums and deleted edges. Silence isn’t 100% magnificent but usually better than noise. It was only a matter of collide.

It’s Benzene, It’s Ash, It’s Lead,

and many other things dissipating, 
So sorry, but despite this, elephants 
prop up their feet, listen for their herd. 

Wasn’t there always awe, punctuated
with grief? WonderPain. MarvelWoe. 
WowLoss. Weren’t we always elegies 

with spleens? But today all I care about 
is the Island Marble Butterfly making 
a comeback. Coming back in all its green- 

and-white-mottled glory. The average dreamer 
dreams four to seven times a night. Whether or not
we believe in karma, Carhartt’s, or chocolate-

covered ice cream squares called Klondikes,
our shoulders, trapezius muscles, and lungs 
all look pretty much the same when autopsied. 

Passing torched trees, garbage gyres, 
the smokestacks of Longview and Tacoma, 
we might not react exactly the same, 

but we all feel something, right? Hair 
and trembling. And when a diaphragm 
sharply contracts, any one of us will hiccup.

MARTHA SILANO‘s most recent poetry collection is Gravity Assist (Saturnalia Books, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, DIAGRAM, 32 Poems, and elsewhere. She teaches at Bellevue College. Find her at marthasilano.net.

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