Alice Pettway
So many stories about the moon
about swallowing the white pill
until it dissolves
our minds,
until we wash ourselves with it,
sudsing the pale lye circle
along our arms
and legs, about hair dark
and matted at our elbows
and the need to chew clean through all the things
we were too afraid to eat before,
about women
and blood and the driftwood
of desire floating
up from the California coast
to northern waters
where the moon fishes it out
and lights a blaze
colorless in the night.
So many stories
about the days that shrink
into almost nothing
and the nights that hang
the weight of the moon
at the end of a long string
swinging back and forth
above the mountains,
cratered cheeks gnawing
on themselves until
flesh falls away and only
the dark remains.
First published in Dawn Chorus, Salmon Poetry, Ireland.