Caterina’s Reviews > The Moon Is Always Female: Poems > Status Update

In my childhood bed we float, your sweet
husky voice singing about the crescent
moon, with two horns sharp and bright we would
climb into like a boat and row away
and see, you sang, where the pretty moon goes.
.
In the land where the moon hides, mothers
and daughters hold each other tenderly.
There is no male law at five o'clock.
Our sameness and our difference do not clash
metal on metal but we celebrate and learn.

Rearing
and galloping, tumbling and with tangled
mane the horses of the surf with mad eyes
with snorting nostrils and rattling hooves
stampede at the land. I am in danger
yet I do not run. I am rooted watching
knowing that what I watch
is also me.

In daily life I quiver like a mass of frog's
eggs. Quaking I carry my breasts before
me like ripe figs a thumb could bruise
and, Be careful! Be careful! I croon
all day like a demented cuckoo with only
one harsh plaintive cry to those I love.
.
They pay no attention at all but wander
freely in and out of danger like sanderlings
feeding on the edge of the ocean as the tide
changes, chasing each wave ....

We use our politics
as French papas put broken
bottles, jagged glass on top
of the walls of suburban
villas, so no prowler
can climb over.

What closeness remains
is that of samurai
in ritual sword dance
combat, each hoping to
behead the other and,
invulnerable and armored, escape.
.
from Armed combat in a café

People often labor to attain
what turns out to be the entrance
to a small closet
or a deep pit
or sorrow like a toothache of the brain.
.
I wanted you. I fought you
for yourself, I wrestled
to open you, I hung on.
I sat on my love as on the lid
of a chest holding a hungry bear.
You were what I wanted: you
still are.

Dance like a jackrabbit
in the dunegrass, dance
not for release, no
the ice holds hard but
for the promise.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
and although they have
pronounced us dead, we
rise again invisibly,
we rise and the sun sings
in us sweet and smoky
as the blood of the maple
that will open its leaves
like thousands of waving hands.
. . .
from The inside chance