FINAL POEM FOR THE MOON

My first lover, my clavicle’s chiseler

sculpting me into blue lamentation

and crucible for your lunacy,

summon me to scuttle forward—

cancer moon, cancer rising—and fill

myself on your dust-flashed milk,

your gray honey black-green grasses

use to sharpen their nightblades. My paramour

who gowns me in a yawning glint, Helios’s

canvas by which you find your aspects,

find your shape misshapen in seven-eighths,

your eighth self finally filled with ochre blood

or the ruddy salutations of familiar fever.

You pass your sickness to me like fervor,

my heart a moon learning all its phases

at once. My idiolect and diaphragm,

deliberate disc slipped from Thoth’s spine,

Elysium I pitch my body beneath, white morning

glories opening from my sweat-flushed back.

I feel my veins harp-pluck toward you. I rise

like any body of water compelled into risk,

pulled up the god-ladder of your gibbous.

You perfect your appetite in my blood,

hematite of harvest, scolecite that pulls

my bloodwaves to zenith in your skull

of good omen, your lambent weight

witness to worship and worry. I, a sun-celibate

celebrant ensconced in pearl. My mood unravels

in your fingerless hand. I dance lute-backed

in the armory of your niveous eye. Your snake-fang

posture I hang from my ear, your crescent

weaning me off your nectar. I will grieve

your circumference, your diameter, your secant

and chord as you renew yourself with erasure:

Moon as a mouth no more.

Moon as a wound no more.

Moon wound round my fists

no more. Moon in the grips

of hunger, moon chip-toothed,

goat-eye round in shock no more.

Moon no beast aspires to kiss.

Moon the color of my coming

no more. Misery moon. Moon

dipped in a wail. Moonsick

no more. Moonward, dust floats

but lingers no more. Moon-heavy

chimney, no more. Moon-washed

tongue washing me, no more. Full

moon night’s chandelier no more.

How high the no-more moon?

The cow jumps over the nevermoon.

Moon River no more. Wider than a mile,

my arms take the shape of you no more.

Do not watch me while I look for you,

in the galaxy that breathes your many names:

Tsukuyomi, Coyolxāuhqui, Chang’e, Khonsu.

I am malaised by moonglut, moonstruck,

lunatic eclipsed by my lips’ supplicant O!

The Void