Photo by Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash
once friends put a moon
lamp at their wedding table,
glowing globe cupped by wood.
what was the point? another
friend wondered. you can't see
its pockmarks and pitting. how
would you know it was a moon
without the craters cracking
across hir face? think of Méliès
ramming another rocket into it.
think of the astronauts, boots nestled
in lunar dirt, poofing their way over
the porous surface. think about artemis,
gleaming goddess with keen scars
from her hunts, silvery under light. think
of waveless flag and weightless feet.
think of the moon in a hand,
photo from santorini honeymoon
where you thought you were so
clever, laughing as you pretended
to pinch it between web of index
and thumb. you lost your wedding band
on the pebbled beach and joked about
signs and portents, that the moon
had been a blood one for all the
blushing it brought you. the moon
can't heal, but manages to remake
hirself each month. think about how
sometimes you put the moon
in an egg carton. sometimes
you leave it in the sky.
Gretchen Rockwell is a queer poet currently living in Pennsylvania. Xe is the author of the microchapbooks love songs for godzilla (Kissing Dynamite, 2020) and Thanatology (Ghost City Press, 2020); xer work has appeared in perhappened mag, Whale Road Review, Poet Lore, FreezeRay Poetry, and elsewhere. Gretchen enjoys writing poetry about gender and sexuality, history, myth, science, space, and unusual connections – find xer at www.gretchenrockwell.com or on Twitter at @daft_rockwell.