Moon

The night the moon
Lost its light

Something it never had
From the beginning

Silence has a sound

Foreign words speak
From tiny, helpless lips

Foreign actions speak
From strange, marred bodies

A small, red grain
In a field of tan

The eye's corner catches it
Where most aren't looking

The only sounds are heard
Through queer ears

As people shout creaky protests
From steel pipe vocal chords

She lifts her head...

from the thin fabric,
tired of hearing the rustling
of microscopic men
on her pillowcase
and the constant touch
of the sheets draping themselves
across her arms,
legs,
breasts

more than he’s touched her
in two weeks
“alone with the alone”
except the alone is not with her
only herself,
and trivial things-
needles from the fluorescent light
stabbing her eyes,
and the long, stiff armrest
of the dried-dirt-colored chair
she sits on

picking balls of concentrated lint
off the gut of her sweatshirt,
she wonders if it would be different
if they lived in another era,
she clad in a long gown,
and he in a dark suit,
drinking red wine
from extravagant stemware

or in another world,
her the
purple, dancing, feathered leaves
to his
liquid, gyrating trunk

Series Johanna VI by Alexander Bergström

October '09

Mimicking the letter “O” with lips
An invisible person in a bathroom stall
The harsh S’s of whispered voices
A red plastic cups sits at the end of a row of glasses
      as if waiting to be washed with the others
The wrinkles around her eyes
      match the crinkled tissue in her hand
“Sparkling coffin”
Feel for the right grooves
Peel away layers of skin



Holy kiwi