A New Moon and Other Poems
by Lee Kiblinger
A NEW MOON
“The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, and expressionless.”
-Ray Bradbury
Before, she only slept eastward
so dawn’s foreseen light
flickered through the leaves
freckling her face
and what lay behind,
her past and all that followed,
lolled, suspended in the hollow
of nightfall—
despite the day, shadows hid
her open pores, cell-bound graves
unsteamed, clogged in oily stores
of rotated hours, her joy
buried in the waning—
until one day’s dusk,
the new moon’s ghost
whispered in evening’s clouds,
its breath dampening her skin
to loosen the fissures
of dried flakes
in a wash of warmth—
and she rolled over,
smoothing her cratered bed
and faced the phases
of all that followed
from the east
and the west.
A MAST YEAR
Pecans fell like rain
that fall, lime-gold husks
blanketed blades
of green, fracturing
shadows of drupe-
laden boughs
as children cached
shells in giant shirts
and shucks cracked
the cries of jubilee
beneath tiny feet—
what bounty!
when baths of lingering
spring rinse the rise
of a flowering
and tunneled bridges
of fungal share
their alms
whispered
as wind-giggled gifts
of sugar breath
while skins
laugh sheds
of fruit-showers
and we gather—
in rhythmic romp
to store
all we had forgotten
beneath the beauty
of more.
LEE KIBLINGER
Lee Kiblinger is a late blooming poet from Tyler, Texas, who graduated with a B.A. and M.Ed. from Vanderbilt University. She has taught literature and writing courses for several years. She spends time traveling with her husband, laughing with her three adulting children, grading essays, playing mahjong, and enjoying words with Rabbit Room poets. Her work can be found in The Windhover, Solum Journal, Heart of Flesh, Ekstasis, Clayjar Review, The Way Back to Ourselves, and others. She writes at www.ripplesoflaughter.com.