Today's poem is by Martha Silano

Love
        with apologies to Julie Sheehan

I hate your kneecaps floating free
in their salty baths. I hate your knees,

both of them, and I hate your eyelashes,
especially the ones that fall out, the ones

you're supposed to wish on; I wish you
bad wishes. I hate every hair

on your hairy face, hate you as much
as I hate being put on hold,

thank you for your patience
when I have none, when patience

is as far away as my first grade teacher's
if you have nothing nice to say . . .

Your mushroom risotto: hate it.
The salmon you're defrosting: hate.

My vowels hate you.
My adverbs hate you. The backyard

hates you—the backyard with all its abandoned
dump trucks, with the giant hole our son dug

all summer while soaker hoses soaked. That hole
and all holes, including the hole in the ozone,

which of course keeps growing bigger.
Spaghetti wrapping around a fork.

Mashed spinach and carrots caught
in the rungs of a highchair, stuck

to the floor like dried green paint: hate,
hate, hate. Each furry rabbit a little furry ball

of hate. Each blackberry a messy drupe of drippy hate.
At the China Palace the plates piled high with Mu Shu

Hate, the plates now a busboy's burden of hate,
the only sound the dumpster's clanging hate hate hate.

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Copyright © 2023 Martha Silano All rights reserved
from Lords of Misrule editors: Rebecca Lauren & Henry Israeli
Saturnalia Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission