The Last Arctic

1

My mother calls me Luna Moth.
She says I will dust the far-end perches.
When I lie in bed

with the lights off she brushes

my teeth & they are hers.
In the silencing wind of the poplar farm
she contorts her mouth into pale

geographic compositions.
Weathervane, deep well,
static gestures, a time quarry
whose spoils replace my molars, we are

of God's netted inhale.
My father sighs, standing on the porch, arms
folded to his chest. One cuticle
of moonlight constricts, scrapes
across his lip, audible, not like a father moth
but aching spoken swollen
in the earth.
But when I flap my wings, encircle her,
rub my sweet gum against her wrist,

she tastes like dark night.
Like warm patient stars.


2

I sleep in the pit now.
He has taken me away from her.
I dream of her breath polishing
a green apple like an off-air

weather channel.
There are others now.
They stand like scarecrows,
hind wings unfurling into jagged breeze puzzles.
They let their eyes dry.
Watch the blur bend
& become my astronomy.
I crease & soil garments though I'm naked.
In the dark they hear me gnaw the trough
until my jaw unleashes the cold night air.
Sometimes I talk to roots
& the roots keep the sound in the sky
from pouring down.