Angelica Esquivel
Moon Ceremony
Connected only by our thoughts
across the deserted city, one
on a balcony, another near
Hogback Road, we are setting fire
to our sacrifices—tobacco, sweet-
grass, sage—they flicker once,
twice, and catch the energy of this
collective, that which remains
when the collective’s been disjointed—a
skeleton with too much space
between its skull plates. The wind whips
at our long black hair while
we gaze up at the honey-dipped
moon and share this vision in our
disunion: the dark, tranquil nectar
of the lunar maria—our grandmothers
and their grandmothers. A silent
diaspora, ongoing.
—Submitted on 04/15/2020
Angelica Esquivel is a Xicana writer and artist. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Cream City Review, Gordon Square Review, Chestnut Review, The Coil, and other journals. She lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., with her husband and emotionally needy dog.
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