Quirks From the Moon
by Laura L. Snyder


Get ready. Empty out the blue lake and swirl it with two feathers
from a cockatoo. You’ll have ink enough, and while you’re at it,

have a gaggle of geese at hand so you can swipe quills. Turn off the cat,
and sit yourself down with some really big vellum sheets. Then,

with the scratch and blot of a well-exercised hand, run practice loops
within the illuminated borders. Stand back when the curlicue of desire

begins to puff smoke and the pennant of hope rises
over the tower of de Chirico. Go! The cooperative ants

will carry a wheat stem as a bridge, and with their shout
cues the turtle to launch himself higher than he’d dreamed,

white crash helmet on, he doesn’t even need his paddle feet to oar,
he just goes like a discus toward that pale milk-face blinking with sun --

where the turtle-muse beams pictures from the moon.






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