I ask you, is stuffing a deceased taxidermist fitting?
How and where should he be mounted?
I am the spawn of a cumulus cloud!
I humidify arrivistes!
You come to me with eruptions. I repair you. Neither
swiftly nor slowly does it snow in Gabon.
As a break from spreading rumors,
I enter summer rentals and leave teapots.
It is strange, seeing nothing everywhere
nor caring that certain beverages taste like masonry.
“You have a look I once found alarming.”
Nature abhors cosmetic enigmas.
My disapproval of the Treaty of Ghent raises questions.
I see you but don’t see you, if you take my meaning.
I just met the other loneliest man in the world
but he is crazy and doesn’t count.
Intent on diction I fail to note how mere steps away
Behemoth practices somersaults.
Are we merely perishables asking to be disposed of
thoughtfully? I’m told the psyche smells.
I’m content enough here in bed
yet long to know what kites are thinking.
Empty a down-filled pillow over a pond.
Confuse the fish.
Choose one: lilies wilting in a crypt, a wife in a bathroom
singing loudly, an octopus with a knife.
I rearrange traffic from my office in the bank, with a paddle.
They’re always there, these vehicles.
Summer ends. I return to the house. Apples
remain, devoted to their trees.
One day long ago I preened and pouted
and sat in a bucket. One day later I wondered why.
“Keep me supplied!” I shout from the keyboard.
“Inaccuracies are welcome.”
The no-accident bonus clause makes for tepid adventurers.
Thus one avoids dark rooms and crevasses.
In 1714 Daniel Fahrenheit invented a thermometer
you could spit out in the doctor’s office.
A man plants a crown of thorns on his glans
and says, mostly to himself, “Jesus! That hurts!”
Buried in delta sludge, J. Edgar Hoover’s avatar
tries to think of something amusing.
Remind yourself during the pageant that these
these are mere bullets and that you’re a Rosicrucian.
States of grace etch goose eggs against a sky-blue sky.
A visiting committee opts for dignity.
Finally, there is the abduction scene.
Today the sky is cloudy gray.
Mike Silverton is most recently the author of Anvil on a Shoestring (2022), Trios (2023), and Yoga for Pickpockets (2024).
His poetry appeared in the late '60s and early '70s in Harper’s, The Nation, Wormwood Review, Poetry Now, some/thing, Chelsea, Prairie Schooner, Elephant and other publications he may have (and most likely) mislaid. William Cole included Mike’s poems in four anthologies: Eight Lines and Under, Macmillan, 1967; Pith and Vinegar, Simon and Schuster, 1969; Poetry Brief, Macmillan, 1971; and Poems One Line & Longer, Grossman, 1973.
As a culture go-getter, Mike produced poetry readings for The New School for Social Research, New York’s municipal radio station, WNYC, and Pacifica Radio’s WBAI, KPFA, and KPFK. One glaring regret: Mike had arranged to record Frank O’Hara on the week in which he was killed, the weekend intervening, by a dune buggy.
Mike’s music writing, centering on modernist classical, appeared in Fanfare, a bimonthly review, and several Internet publications, including his own LaFolia.com. Mike's reviews of high-end audio hardware appeared in the main in The Absolute Sound, a print publication, and StereoTimes.com. For the unlikely audiophile reading this, Mike's speakers are Wilson Audio Sasha W/P.
When Mike and Lee relocated from Brooklyn to Midcoast Maine in early 2002 he indulged an interest in Dadaesque assemblage, resulting in several works in a group show at The Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, and a one-man show at Belfast’s Aarhus Gallery. Mike and Lee’s 1842 house and barn are peppered throughout with work he’d have preferred to sell. (Jefferson Davis spent a night, obviously at an earlier time. Really.)