IX.

Clouds thread through fingers. I dim the lamps and don’t sleep. Two hands cup the 

moon.

Cheii shouts, Stop, jiníí. Tides reverse shores, not curses. Blind eye of the moon.

Dream blush, heat, and lust. Midnight, a desert flower blossoms, dies amidst flashes.

Tourists with backpacks fight over wilting petals and extoll the moon.

The sun dies, briefly. All to say, it is night now and alluvial

ghosts gather cactus spines, loose silk of black widow webs; a diode emits a moon.

A wife reads with tea; it’s early, soundlessly bright; dust fanned by pages

dance in pulsing light. She stops; sings her child, “dog barks at the moon.”

Winter solstice: dusk. Saturn aligns Jupiter. A door shut, opens.

A dead man appears, skin husked by drought and famine. A transient moon.

Dear god: I’m tired. Of you, who or whatever. Greed struck you dead, so

long ago. Our hearts, money, sport, and sex, two-faced, like the moon.