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Writing Down the MoonA text for the moon would be unprintable.Would be full one moment, empty the next. Men become fearful, invent a religion by its irregular tick. Women sew by its shimmer, dresses whose folds ensnare the quick sluice of thoughts lost down the drain, scrubbed off dishes, swept from the hearth. A text for the moon would be found in the children's books my mother wrote, on my old Smith Corona, years after her death. Seeing it I wanted it back. Badly. Envy for her huge body of posthumous work. Wanting the tiny boxed set of skeleton Mariachis pasted on the small Olivetti, with a poem, warning that if fish is what you want, Fish Now. A text for the moon would fly past, like the ribbon feathered cranes. Overhead, perhaps thousands, going continually South, in a dream where one plunged, afire, to earth. I didn't know it then, how I would long to go back to the mountains with a different man. Quixotic text. Chocolate moon, violet moon, re-writing itself by night many-petalled, many flavoured light. At once, shy among new greens, and dark, a blare on the tongue seeking sweet. A text for the Moon is recipes for cocktails, mysteriously currant colored, reeking of gin, sprigged with mint, Head tossed back, a shooter, gulped down. Drunk on the letters, the double vowelling, the soft swoony consonants. A text for the moon would be perfumed, in January, the text is hunger, and the smell, sunwarmed hay, the last in the quiet barn. |
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Issue #22/23, October, 2001 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.