Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: In an era of political division, this imaginative poem by Martha Silano details a literal division of the US back in the Cretaceous period. The poem describes the flora and fauna of that time in fantastic detail and is, in a way, an elegy for the Age of Agreement. One of our most skilled poets of scientific imagery, Silano collapses time and place to help us understand our contemporary moment—and what it could be.
To hear Martha read the poem, click below:
During the Cretaceous Our Country Was Divided for Sixty Million Years
by an inland sea. The fissure was 2,000 miles long, 600 feet wide,
and 2,500 feet deep. On the left side, Laramidia.
On the right, Appalachia. Back then,
the landscape was recognizable to both sides. To both,
clams were the size of small area rugs,
turtles as big as Dodge Darts.
Both agreed Elasamosaurus had a streamlined body,
paddle-like limbs, a 23-foot-long neck.
If a Ginsu shark swam past,
both would laugh about how it got its name: its ability to slice
and dice. No one argued whether Hesperornis, a cormorant-
like bird chowed down whole by mosasaurs,
was flightless or not, whether it used its bill and teeth
to hunt down bony fish. Maybe because unity
depends on a baseline of shared reality,
all agreeing shark teeth are shark teeth, crinoid lilies
are crinoid lilies, that a fish’s jaw cannot be fungible,
that you can’t swap out a toothed tongue
for a smooth one. On both sides of the divide, dinosaurs roamed.
On both sides, earth was earth, the landscape recognizable
to the creatures on either side.
No one on the left side and no one on the right side
rubbed their eyes and said Nope, nope,
no such thing as a plesiosaur,
no such thing as a coccolithophore. The schism was literal,
not figurative. Caused by subduction, one plate colliding
into another. At the end of the Cretaceous,
the sea dried up. Now the sea is all the middle states, those who voted
red and those who voted blue. Where the sea was: the chalky
remnants of a sea, of bivalves, their shiny pearls.
Martha Silano‘s most recent collection of poems is Gravity Assist (Saturnalia Books, 2019). Her work has been featured in Poetry, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere. An avid hiker and paddleboarder, Martha teaches at Bellevue College.
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