What Is the Moon Really?
The moon is the anvil your grandfather
couldn’t take with him into the grave.
The moon is the salt lick a lonely man
leaves in the yard so the deer will come
to his window while he sleeps.
The moon doesn’t know where it’s going,
though it goes there every morning.
The moon is losing its memory.
How long can it be allowed to live
by itself in that cluttered attic?
The moon is a young woman.
The moon is an old man who took
a shift no one else wanted long
ago and no one will switch.
The moon would like to just sit
on a beach somewhere and drink beer,
but it knows it would keep pulling the sea
towards it like a boy pulling the sheets up to his chin.
Then how would it read the Advanced Reader Copy
of the new novel sent by Goodreads?
The moon keeps its hands behind its back,
a boy told to be careful in the museum
so it doesn’t knock into any stars.
The moon wants to know
can it count on your vote in the race
between the moon and the sun?
The moon says we have to live
within the two-party system
while dreaming of the trinity.
The moon has made its peace
with being loved by none
but drunks and poets.
The moon is content with renting.
The moon is a longshoreman,
a card-carrying member.
The moon is this page, it wishes
I’d just left it blank.
The moon is a mirror.
We see ourselves in it.
The moon wants to know
when are we coming back?
It liked the little kisses the astronauts
skipped into its face.
The moon is the girl who wants you
to come home with her,
to whom you say, “I shouldn’t.”
Go.
The moon wants to fall into your hands
like a silver apple you’ve been waiting for
to fall, standing night and day
under the tree so that
people are becoming concerned.
The moon is the son tasked with giving
the eulogy – in return he is given
plenty of space.
The moon is a child’s rowboat drowned
under hailstones and willow leaves.
The moon stays awake so we can sleep.
But some nights the moon isn’t there
when we look, like a guard who goes
missing the night of the assassination.
The moon is envious of the living
but knows how it always ends.
The dead love the moon most.
The moon makes them feel seen.
There are some who, dying,
ask for the bed to be wheeled over
to the window so they can die
in the moonlight.
The moon knows of these,
far away as she is.
She throws her light on them
like children throwing flowers
in a dog’s grave.
The moon is the man chosen
for a lineup, who looks nothing
like who did it, but gets picked
by the witness and put on trial.
The moon is on trial for stealing
the sun’s light, though the sun has plenty.
The sun is a corporation,
the moon a citizen like you and I.