By Nick Dix
The backyard dirt shows where the moon is buried,
the leaves strewn, sneaker-scuffed where it dragged landward,
where I dragged it, hand over hand, heart harried,
towing and knowing I'd be reprimanded.
Last night, I coveted its pockmarked visage,
barnacled beauty. Like a spoiled child,
I knew I had to sink its silver image.
I'd only keep a glory that's defiled.
The ocean thrashed and moaned when the moon came,
vomiting fish and throwing up its courage,
quailing beneath a goddess and its shame.
The lashing waves self-flagellation flourished.
I wound the rope and tended rope burn wounds,
laid over bulging dust concealing branches.
I lie to hide overstepping my bounds.
My hands grow redder as the bandage stanches.
I wear a hat to hide my budding horns
and bury under cotton a bone stabbing
through bald head flesh to grow where earth was torn.
Backyard and body both are blabbing.
I think they hear the pounding orchestra
between my temples, telltale evidence
raining from sweat glands and amygdala.
Each moon-shaped drop betrays my confidence.
The moon in hand, I felt desire die,
palms dusty and disgraced by what I'd blessed.
A puncture hole of light stabbed through my eye,
its non-eclipse wheeled to the starfields west.
Celestial body, my body exalted,
that lovesick seas bewailed so recently,
that silenced wolves and nightjars' moon song halted,
must be destroyed to save my decency.
Destruction, as obvious as a divorce
to feuding newlyweds, craters my face,
a dirt-scabbed shovel in my hands perforce,
my eyes black holes on the dark side of grace.
My shovel falls. The yard is blooming gods.
A gray stalk thrusts into the sky's embrace
and shakes a new moon loose from lunar pods.
Nick Dix lives in a small town north of Dallas with his fiancée, a cat named Noisy, and a pile of books he swears he will read. He writes software by day and poetry by night; if his cat lets him, sometimes he even sleeps. He has been published in The Adirondack Review. He can be found on Twitter.