“My Practice” by Martha Silano

My Practice

My practice was to wake each morning, turn on some faucets.
My practice sometimes involved a wheel.
The plot of my practice had something to do with yanking,
with flour and a bowl, with wrangling a hose
from its comfortable tangle.
There would be the pose called Filling the Feeders,
also the one involving bouncing.
My practice was to think before speaking,
though sometimes those springs gave out.
I was honing my oms, increasing my reps.
My practice, like the seedlings, not uniform,
falling into their own unwieldy formation.

Martha Silano

Martha Silano’s books include The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, winner of the 2010 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and an Academy of American Poets noted book of 2011, and Reckless Lovely (Saturnalia Books, 2014). She also co-edited, with Kelli Russell Agodon, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Paris Review, Kenyon Review Online, and New England Review, among others. Martha edits the Seattle-based literary journal, Crab Creek Review, and teaches at Bellevue College.

Photo Credit: Staff