The Moon Woman

(Source text: The Encyclopaedia of Fantasy by John Clute and John Grant)

I Am Thirsty Now

A woman is lying on the ground.
She can’t get up.
I think she will pull me down
into the earth.
I run,
I run from the earth.

My mother is lying on the ground.
She is sleep.
She is darkness.
She is tears.
She sucks the world into her belly
and it never comes out.
I run,
I run from my mother.

The ancestors are sitting in the corner
drinking wine.
They sing me songs of grief and joy
in an ancient language
my skin understands.
I do not want to go towards the earth.
The earth is sprinkled with their blood.
I run,
I run from their song.

Their arms are heavy and slow.
I think they want to put me in a box
and bury me beside them.
I become fast and light.
I run. I run. I grow wings. I fly.

Her arms were heavy and slow.
But they were arms that held,
that pinned me to one place
long enough to be loved

and the earth was a hill
we rolled down and down
and laughed at the tumble of our senses
and the earth
was my grandmother’s garden
where I picked raspberries
for the raspberry pie.

I am tired now.
Look at me:
I can’t even keep a single plant alive.
I walk on rubber,
watch landscapes on TV.
How long it’s been since I went outside.

I am thirsty now.
I cry when I see the men
dancing in a circle.
These are my people.
I long for them,
for the line of meaning
of bread
of hands
stretching back through time.

I am lying on the ground.
I am thirsty now
for a drink of that wine.

A trio of book spine poems

Blueprints

Talking to my body –
enormous smallness.
A book of luminous things.

Blind willow, sleeping woman,
black swan, white raven –
are you my mother?

Blueprints for building better girls:
everyone’s just so so special.
Blabber blabber blabber everything.

There

Picture this:
the narrow road to the interior
through the woods.

East of the sun and west of the moon,
everything is illuminated.
They do the same things different there.

The Shaman’s Coat

Meeting the shadow
remember remember
beware of God.

One hundred demons
kiss & tell
the angel of losses.

War and peace
mistakes in the background
the invisible partners.

The power of myth
tangles
beyond the words.

The shaman’s coat
travels with a circus
after dark.

* * *

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt “comes to us from Lillian Hallberg. She challenges us to write a “book spine” poem. This involves taking a look at your bookshelves, and writing down titles in order (or rearranging the titles) to create a poem. Some fun images of book spine poems can be found here. If you want to take things a step further, Lillian suggests gathering a list of titles from your shelves (every third or fifth book, perhaps, if you have a lot) and using the titles, as close to the originals as possible, to create a poem that is seeded throughout with your own lines, interjections, and thoughts. Happy writing!”

I enjoyed this prompt so much, I ended up writing three different book spine poems!