Anna and the Moon

In the field near her house

she found the fallen moon,

desiccated as a cheese.

She picked it up and,

looking round, concealed it

in her blouse. When she

returned home, her father,

a beast, wanted to know

what was in her shirt.

She locked herself in her

room. When he knocked

down the door she stood

before him naked and the

moon was like an A-bomb

reducing him to black dust.

This was years ago. She lives

near the outskirts of the city

where she was born. She sees

few people. Folks say she

is batty. Nights she walks outside

and talks to, seemingly, nothing.

And the sky pours down inside her

like the roar of a brand-new species.  

COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published nine novels, four short story collections, and five full-length poetry collections, and a dozen chapbooks. His novel, Memphis Movie, attracted kind words from Ann Beattie, Peter Coyote, and William Hjorstberg, among others. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart many times, and three of his poems were chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs a 143 year-old bookstore in Memphis. He can be found at https://coreymesler.wordpress.com.