A Fuller Moon
He mentioned a few scant things
The month of our two full moons.
I hummed along, the tentative, blurry song,
Not really knowing the words,
Thinking the melody sounded like Home.
He disliked clothing tight at the wrist or neck.
He dreamed of being chased by lions.
He left the t.v. blaring for burglars
When he was
Gone.
(He never thinks about growing old alone.)
He showed me places through the telescope
And spoke as if he owned those hostile planets,
Distant stars.
But when it came to the blue moon
We didn't need magnification
Or monologue.
We staggered out of his sleigh bed
Of dark cherry wood
And hovered on that blazing sky
Like fireflies,
Naked, luminous on that unlikely night.
He worried that my affection
Was riddled with demands.
The following month he swallowed hard,
Gazed at the floor
And mumbled he couldn't make any plans.
I remember once he said he didn't know
And mentioned he couldn't be sure,
But would I come over after the band's Friday set?
And would I bring my things
And stay the night?
So much of it, I have forgotten,
It's so easy to let it go,
The feel of his gently graying hair
Wet against my cheek,
His breath on the small of my back,
These things could be everyone, no one,
But I squealed and felt my soul rise
The time he whined through my fingers,
"I love to watch you come."
Brick
I saw you breeze by me after midnight,
Guitar strapped to your back, sheet lightning,
A whip of pre-hurricane wind,
You on the way to entertain at some wedding,
Gray tuxedo caught in a taxi door,
Don't want to let you get away so easily anymore.
Doesn't anyone ever say, "Stop, what's the matter?"
Doesn't anyone ever sweep your gently graying hair
Out of your childlike, worried eyes
And tell you none of this makes sense?
Are even the slightest of your needs being met?
Have you giving up?
Are you dead yet?
You kiss me tentatively goodbye,
Vacancy in your poker face and stunned deer eyes,
Still the terrible thing I cannot say.
You would laugh.
You would cry.
You would take it in some offending way.
Life is short, Little Star.
How I wonder what your troubles are.
Lean in with your unquiverable lips and brick wall eyes.
Stay with me tonight and maybe tomorrow.
There are things you've never heard,
Things I'm too proud to say.
So, here it is, get the hell back in my bed.
And this time,
Stay.
Conditional
Can you imagine
I need to touch you
Like water in a platinum summer lake,
Dreamy ocean fog,
Smoke from a solitary candle,
A dance before drowning in wax?
I need to pass through you unaltered,
Walk through your unexpectant flesh
Like a melancholy ghost.
You know some parts of me,
That some light washed over your razor gray lake,
Danced through the bent cobalt willows and feathery palms,
Lit up the faces of arrowroot and goatsbeard
Rotting in your window box,
That some errant spark of life
Dared to slip through your door uninvited,
Running leashless, jubilant through the echo
Of your uncluttered rooms,
But wondered off
Because there was nothing to eat,
No warm blanket for the floor.
Micros
It was nothin'
But a few stark nights
Of flesh on flesh in fields
Of blood red, vein blue and lion's gold,
Gossamer pink dragonflies spiraling
The candlelight of your silent back porch.
It was nothin'
But a shark's eye silver sky afire,
A mirror lake in mercury platinum,
Lavender sheet lightning pulsing,
A liquid photograph of stars.
A blue moon is nothin'
But two full moons in a month,
Particles of red light
On a pirouette stretch.
What's the magic of that?
Your luminous smile, strumming fingers,
Your mouth spreading me apart...
I'll forget those nights
As the hunter arches
And the virgin slips.
A blue moon is nothin'
But a bar trick dance of light,
And lips are lips are lips.
bio
Rebecca Lu Kiernan's fiction has appeared in ASIMOV'S SCIENCE
FICTION, MS. MAGAZINE, CLEAN SHEETS, SPACE AND TIME, NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW and other books and magazines in the U.S.
and Australia. Her poetry collection, SEX WITH TREES AND OTHER
THINGS EQUALLY RESPONSIVE was published by 2 River Press.
Her erotic fiction, THE MAN WHO REMEMBERED TOO MUCH was published
by Canada's YGDRASIL. She received a nomination for the Rhysling
Award. She lives on the Gulf Coast.
