In the Moonlight the Wings Telegraph
for Shari
The luna moth doesn’t weep or wail.
It has no mouth. It cannot chew and
doesn’t need to. Anything said is not
said with its filament system but with
flight. It must do what is both peculiar
and disturbing, and as such it knows
a lifetime measured in days is no kind
of collapse—it is just one way to live.
And the point is living when you have
spent most of your season being born
& the rest of it miming a sigh or breath.
This is proof that life is stunningly hard.
& you can make a home out of a body—
& it is not rare for it to be somebody else’s.
At the Drive-thru of the Rest of My Life, Staring at the Menu
I am not interested in the theater of intimacy,
like the way a butcher cleaves remains of a cow into
what is known as choice cuts—one hand gently
pinning down as the other sketches an outline that
brings much comfort to those viewing. He’s a master
at this. Which is to say he is proficient at absolving us
of the sensation of flesh vs meat—this is how to treat
animals with respect, we say. It is one way to absolve
oneself of the past, to divorce human from animal and
butcher from slaughter, which is to say a finger’s gentle
rotation of red cubes of meat is an art, & the small tower
before they are lifted off the board and into a glass bowl
is an offering of sorts, and a smile becomes a supplication
for the animal’s sacrifice—its willingness to be offered up.
