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Moon Pull
by Carlina Duan

I don’t want to hear the physics behind everything I do. I know it’s
there, lurking like a greyhound moon in between my toothpaste,
my thumbs, the body’s scribble. There are skin cells on my jeans.
there is plurality in the way I leave myself behind. I am gone by
the thousands: saliva, nail, stripe of hair; see me seeping into the
dirt. into the water. the young earth had no moon. all of it a rogue
planet, caught between diamond and dust. today, the moon pulls
our water up, into tide & marathon of tide, pulls tree sap, puddles,
my spit. the moon is mysterious and full of a liquid core; it is drain-
ing me down every night. I am a child when I look at the moon. it
festers handsomely in the sky; I am small, small. I am small. I want
to touch the moon on its limp face; physics won’t let me. I want to
be everywhere the moon is; physics says nothing about drought --
what to do about the restless bone. water tastes differently every time
I go to a new fountain. a new house. I stay suspended beneath the
moon and all its tantrums. the moon quivers, won’t look me in the
eye. it is the same every day. if the moon’s gravity pulls on water to
make tides, I want to be pulled, too. every wet slice of me rummag-
ing for moon over my driveway, my window. I want to orbit around
my house. the diameter of the moon is too big for me to skim over.
its gravity is only one-sixth that of the earth. the moon glazes its
rocks, rotates and pulls, pulls with craters and throats. every day,
the light dries out. I am thirsty from below.

"Moon Pull," by Carlina Duan, from I WORE MY BLACKEST HAIR by Carlina Duan, copyright © 2017 Carlina Duan. Used by permission of the poet.