II
Lunar Fragments for the Scorpion Child
This is a lunar fragment
for the scorpion child
who will not sleep, the stripes of his pajama shirt
against the dinosaurs of his pajama pants, the bonnie
he calls bunny who lies over the ocean, oh bring back
my bunny to me, oh
lie down, scorpion child
I had a strange Yom Kippur
insofar as I did not fast
insofar as I reread Jamaica Kincaidâs Lucy
while the child slept on
me last time I read Lucy I shared a tent
with Chet by the snake
preserve, snakes on the desert floor
and in glass terrariums,
this was before we met our husbands.
Today a bee flew into my hair and became tangled in my half-knot, my
scorpion mother pulled it out with her hands and was, unsurprisingly, stung.
I donât know what happened to the bee.
The first time I read Lucy I couldnât get over her motherâs letters,
how she hoards them in her room and wonât open them and wonât
read them, even the letter marked urgent. It occurs to me that I am fundamentally
a person who opens letters
and apologizes, which Lucy never seems to do, which is what Yom Kippur is for, or is supposed to be for, not that I spent it apologizing.
The day broke into night and the moon hung by halves and the scorpion child clutched my shoulders as if frightened by the brightness of the stars. I know even before I look it up that Jamaica Kincaid is a Gemini. My moon is in Gemini
but Iâm still learning what that means
At the Vermeer exhibit
the scorpion child called every lute
a guitar a white-haired woman
pointed at him and said I want you to remember this when youâre 15!
I wanted to say
he really doesnât
have to thatâs not how
art works I wanted to shout Vermeer was a Scorpio too you can tell
by the skin which always seems to be
on fire at air & space there are three stones
from the moon that I want to put in the poem without explanation
the way you could hide them in a neighborâs garden and nobody would notice
basalt and we stood among the butterflies anorthosite where a pink-spotted cattleheart
refused to give up her Taurean secrets (typical) & a morpho perched on us both
at the same time for a moment
for some brave and stupid reason you let the volunteer convince you
to touch the Madagascar hissing cockroach hold the caterpillar hopper stick insect
the moon waxed from Pisces into Aries breccia which means nothing to me
The scorpion child says his favorite animal is the moon,
then laughs & says giraffe. The moon
is exalted in Jackson Pollockâs chart. I said I could do that & my scorpion mother
said but you didnât & itâs super true, I didnât
so mazel tov Aquarius king &
happy 106th today theoretically you could have
made it to the party.
The color orange extremely is a Gemini.
The color orange is talking to you. My Gemini moon
a harvest moon rises like a clementine. It rises
oh my darling like an animal
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