Jessica Cohn
Blame the Moon
Chrome moon, set back in the aching black skull of night,
single-beam headlight. I see you, through sliding glass.
I see how you spotlight your milk-bright canvas,
the outdoor sofa, stage-ready on the deck.
I am too early for morning, the only one awake,
it would seem, anywhere. And so recall the
childhood self, so lonely, so afraid of spirits
wrapped in moonlight, how rubbed eyes conjured elves.
Searchlight moon, even now you imprint
your brightness to question what’s real.
A sleeping figure, half-dressed, draped on
moon-lit cushions, air, cooling her thin, bare arms.
No cloud cover to hide the phalanx of proud boys.
They are coming for us. And I am wearing that
gown of glow. The body follows me
wherever I go. And it’s been so much trouble.
Moonbeams, my liftoff, sickness and strength.
Let me be otherworldly. Let me be stronger
tonight. Maybe it’s morning. Clocks only tick. This
is a lifetime. And I ask the candle-bright moon to heal me,
to whisper, to please me, to get my permission, to lie.
—Submitted on 10/30/2020 to the erstwhile What Rough Beast series
Jessica Cohn‘s poems have appeared in Rattle, Split Rock Review, Monterey Poetry Review, phren-z, Sleet Magazine, and other journals, as well as in California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology (Story Street Press, 2020) and other anthologies. She lives on California’s Central Coast and works as a reporter.
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