My story is pure vertigo, my eyes
are poppy-petaled, open to the sun.
o
cuerpo oscura,
I feel my way along the street
and hear voices. Sometimes I ask
what's to regret?
Daylight fails without me.
DENISE DUHAMEL
August
That night the moon is every girl's pony,
an ecstatic face looking down at her the first time
she makes love. Some say the moon's a man,
or at least know of a man living there.
Others insist the moon's all-woman,
her skirt - the ocean waves, Marilyn Monroe
over a subway grate. I smell a fireplace
that night but can't find it, each chimney
cold and alone. I see the air
and taste the fog, a souffie fresh out of the oven.
It's hot, summer in Mill Town. Joe and Jane
put their faces up to their electric fans
before they leave to work the graveyard shift.
In each row house, sheets are full of sweat.
Husbands disentangle from wives so both can breathe.
A third group still believes the moon is cheese,
that the astronauts were just lucky to land on the right spot.
The emergency room fills up, gun shots and stab wounds.
"That bitch is making people crazy," one doc says.
The moon has never been called that before.
His wife begins her period, staining her nightgown,
as she dreams of red horses coming over red hills
