A moonlit feast, this meadow.
Milk-white memories of heaven-scented neighborhoods
Filled with eglantines and hummingbird nests,
Spray-painted alleyways and tall-hatted chimneys.
The well-mannered windmill at the crest of the hill
And the lonesome outhouse out back
With its invisible drip and perpetual coldness,
Urine-tinted walls sagging with humidity,
Lit by a solitary, anachronistic light bulb.
Eyes hang behind windowpanes,
Draped with mascara lines and scraped with crow’s feet.
The haunted streets like unlit hallways in a vacant house,
A house in which ghost children still play.
A dog wheezes behind a dumpster, wags floppy ears
To ward off flies, tail bent at an odd angle.
Night is the bottom of a well
With gray walls of darkness covered in glowing dust
And charming trails of niter and peat moss,
Salt-encrusted comet trails.
A lily-padded polka-dot pond:
Soft molten moonlight hands
Play upon its rippled surface
Speckled with frog-skinned mold.
The dream-mottled dawn
Peeks over spilling hills.
The sill trembles to hold it
Until I squeeze twilight like apricots
And am covered in tomorrow.
