--- M A R T H A   S I L A N O

Until I spilled a plate of beans and rice with hot sauce
into a customer's lap. Until I hastily misconstrued 
the distance of my side view mirror 
to the neighbor's fence, 

sheered it off like an ear of corn from the stalk.
When the plane you're in suddenly loses
lift, what else but to wish for the chance 
to leave from C7, 

not the disastrous C8. Never mind it was heading 
for Saginaw, better than the nowhere soon 
to be strewn with luggage blown to bits. 
But to go back 

to my kindergarten graduation-the pink-with-yellow-polka-dot dress, 
a grocery bag's bottom dangling a crepe paper tassel, 
to my father's "you did it!"- I'd live each day 
with the look on the face of the man 

who'd never return to Bandeleone's again, pay each week 
his dry cleaning bill, look, for the rest of my life, 
carefully over my shoulder, slowly,
slowly backing up.