Mary Jo Bang, p.3
HOW HIGH THE MOON
Is that a clock?
If it is, you’ll have to turn it more toward me
because from this angle, as it is,
I can’t see anything
of what’s happened. Can only hear
the sullen buzz of electricity,
a gnat wishing, as it were, it were
in the tan beyond.
A pinchwork of skin is registering
an evil tick. My eyes are sighing,
O sad, O sad. And serious
things are happening outside.
Meanwhile, two are sitting in here
in the How High the Moon Chairs.
Each giving the other a comforting smooch.
Tell me again
how Time doesn’t much exist.
Only art. Only x
solving itself stutteringly like a ripe balloon
on the downswing. Unhurried love
shimmying across the marble walls.
Fistfuls of miniature bamboo
growing becoming all slowly. An ear at the earthbed
can next to hear them
as clouds form above
from cluster bombs dropped on a distant land.
Forty-six years from this now,
the moon will again be full.
Fueled by reflection, by transference.
In the Sierras it’s snowing.
In 2020 will we be
less blind? Nineteen eyeblinks answer
in a brushed aluminum November.
Is that a clock?
If it is, you’ll have to turn it more toward me
because from this angle, as it is,
I can’t see anything
of what’s happened. Can only hear
the sullen buzz of electricity,
a gnat wishing, as it were, it were
in the tan beyond.
A pinchwork of skin is registering
an evil tick. My eyes are sighing,
O sad, O sad. And serious
things are happening outside.
Meanwhile, two are sitting in here
in the How High the Moon Chairs.
Each giving the other a comforting smooch.
Tell me again
how Time doesn’t much exist.
Only art. Only x
solving itself stutteringly like a ripe balloon
on the downswing. Unhurried love
shimmying across the marble walls.
Fistfuls of miniature bamboo
growing becoming all slowly. An ear at the earthbed
can next to hear them
as clouds form above
from cluster bombs dropped on a distant land.
Forty-six years from this now,
the moon will again be full.
Fueled by reflection, by transference.
In the Sierras it’s snowing.
In 2020 will we be
less blind? Nineteen eyeblinks answer
in a brushed aluminum November.