Stonecoast Review
The Literary Journal of the Stonecoast MFA
Defining the Third Element & Philoselene
This poem originally appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 20. Support local booksellers and independent publishers by ordering a print copy of the magazine.
By M.E. Silverman
Defining the Third Element
Lith i um [‘liTHēəm] n.
1. Chemistry: soft metal that burns moon-white, lightest of the alkali, travels by river, swims in healing springs; reacts with our own carbon dioxide in Oxygen Masks, bends into plane, train, bike, and battery; comes from Greek meaning stone, gift, soother—symbol: Li, discovered in 1817 by a Swedish scientist—atomic weight: 6.939, tends to haunt Australia’s stretch, in Chile’s leg, and Bolivia’s heart.
2. Pharmacology: treats the inner howl, becomes honeycomb without the buzz, a space-walk without star-fire; interacts with neurotransmitters and electric receptors inside our inner gray swaying cage; can cause chills, desert mouth, and eyeball fog.
3. Mineralogy: occupies bleak lands like a holy hermit who sees ghosts and talks to demons; these cracked salt flats can be seen from space, like twinkling treasure from an emerged sea; John Glenn saw settled patches like week-old snow, quiet plains of brine, a white-gold quilt stitched to the Earth, a wide and apocalyptic place where even gods refuse to go.
Philoselene
Each cloud a step I climb—
lumbering astronaut bounces.
Each sliver of light a beam I trapeze—
swings me farther forward
toward you,
my nightglow. Below
each dark sea a reflecting pearl I circumvent—
oh, those poor, pale imitations!
Each falling star a leap I take—
from the thinnest mountain tip
a quarter million mile obstacle course that moves me away,
away from this mad marble.
**
You—my bright compass:
I am lost
in your white currant pool.
You—my high hanging silver fruit:
I am space-flower
in your night garden.
You—my O‑ring,
look down,
see the mystery:
on January 28, 1986,
for you, I—
Earth-bound in gravity’s well,
a tin tomb of bone and heart—
become man
made of stardust flakes.
M. E. SILVERMAN has published two books of poems and co-edited Bloomsbury’s Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust, and 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium. @4ME2Silver
These poems originally appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 20.
Photo by Sifan Liu
