Moon Lilies - Alex Surprenant

On the kitchen stove, bacon fat

split-splats into pieces;

Springtime poppies cut

in half to desert heat.

Perhaps I will blossom too,

let my spine sing sing sing until

I am open to each penny of a star.

and I can unbutton the wire of my lips to

Pause for the plink-plop of asteroids to wash

through my mouth to my toes, and I can become the moon.

No no no says my sister,

my sister who is like a stretched-out strand

Of praise grass, no no no

You are not the sky,

You are a girl.

And what’s more–

soon the woman will crawl out of you like a moth with big eyes.

I spit, palm on my hip:

if I am going to be a woman I want to be

a real earth-woman, the kind with

Limbs like coyotes, all twisted with tendons

and wild with muscle but still smooth-moving

As sunday syrup. the kind of earth-woman

with yellow hair and soil-feet.

So let my blood be the Colorado, a lion of a river. Let

my eyes be made of abalone shells– the kind we scavenged

For as children. I am going to be a real earth-woman because last night I watched the full-moon

With my father who is like a crumpled lily, and he

laughed a tight laugh and said

My hair is as white as the moon.

And so: Bodies are just bodies, human-soft and wilting.

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Alex Surprenant is a poet from Malibu, California. She has won the under 19s Robert Graves Poetry Award, as been published in several online magazines, such as Tiny Seed Journal and Prometheus Dreaming. She is inspired to write from her experiences in nature, especially as a devoted surfer and marine activist.