Three New Tarot Poems

photo: Martin Adams via Unsplash

The Moon: the uncanny landscape of the subconscious, revealed.
The Ten of Pentacles: prosperity, good fortune, dreams.
The Tower: inevitable disaster.

My small poems on these cards are out now in Yes Poetry's new e-chapbook Haunted: Tarot Poems.

Download the free book here or read just my poems here.

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Der Blaue Weiher by Hugo Henneberg

The Night Ocean
by Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks

We are the night ocean filled
with glints of light. We are the space
between the fish and the moon,
while we sit here together.

To the Wizard of Menlo Park

You should know it doesn’t count
If you cheated, and you should know
We know you did. Who but a time traveler
Would sweat until the filament formed;
Who but the one who has known silver dawn
Would bother to burgle one trip
To the moon? There is no sport
To this brilliance. Your fizzing chariot
Awaits in the alley:
Be gone, and leave us our fire.





more on alleged intellectual poacher Thomas Alva Edison here
watch "Le Voyage dans la Lune" here

The Axis

White moths have crept through the cracks
in the window screens and now they trace
dizzy spirals over my snowdrift comforter. Up
to the lights in the high ceiling, down again,
dazed, disoriented, more in love than ever
with what they believe is the moon.




photograph by Paul Tyler

Heptonstall

Sylvia Plath, pale patron saint
of all this rising sadness, I must know
that this is the last life,
this unrepentant madness.

In Heptonstall the chalky door
of your smallest and final cocoon
bears the scars of the nails of virgins,
the glittery spots of dried-tear moons.

Someone has left you sugary sweet peas,
wrapped in thin pink paper. I hope
they did not wake you. I hope
there is no waking.

Half Haiku: Icy Morning

You have gone; like the
vagrant moon I am homesick.






photograph by Elfi Kaut

Night in the Garden

There are monsters in the garden,
gnawing tomatoes into pulpy lace,
pea pods into twigs. Their pincers
arc, little crescents in the light
of the harvest moon.

The earwigs shy
from the divine fire of my flashlight.
They cling to the stakes as I shake them down
like walnuts.

At the fence I slow my sword of judgment.
The ripe sunflowers hold the day's heat still,
and snug in the heart of the widest lion face,
the bumblebee hums in his sleep.

The night is suddenly so loud, alive
with cries for love and hunger.
The flashlight clicks off beneath my heavy thumb.
I back slowly from the nursery.






photograph by Cassandra Barney

Ship in a Bottle

He carried the clay pitcher with him always,
visible like a chip on his shoulder,
but it was only on the shipwrecks
as the old men drowned around him
that he filled his jug and drank.

She watched hawk-eyed from the shore as the sun rose,
watched him paddle the dying survivors home
with one arm,
not letting go his watery love.

In their driftwood hut he'd set the jar on the table
and collapse,
And as the moon floated take it up again,
to sign his name beneath the old men
of another night's ship.



photograph by Ragnhildur Ýr Pétursdóttir

After the Opera

The cherubs emerged first,
ringlets unwinding as they moved
through the crowd. In the careless light of the parish hall
their girl-eyes grew shadows,
their child-hands wedding bands.

One by one angels, shepherds,
graces drifted from cloud
to dessert table, their feathered feet
landing hard on the church carpet.

Outside the moon wore
her only mask. Cupid met us
in the hall; the elastic straps of her wings
had carved red lines in her shoulders.
"We're getting married," she said
with a shrug. "Wanted you
to know."

As we crept from the reception Adonis appeared,
silk leaves still tangled in his hair. His bangled mother
drew him close: "So wonderful, honey.
So perfect, love."



painting by John William Waterhouse

Processing

Glance at the sun.
See the moon and stars.
Gaze at the beauty of the earth's greenings.
Now,
Think.

Hildegard von Bingen


Let the beauty you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.

attributed to Rumi




photograph by Marie Hochhaus

March

So much collides
In these small days. Today
Spring begins, and Purim at sundown:
The earth rolls sleepily into a patch
Of sunlight. We don masks
And crowns.
Tomorrow Jesus will die,
And the moon will fill herself
Full. Sunday he will rise:
Small feet will shift
In ankle socks. We speak
Murder to one another;
Fertility, salvation. Birdsong.
We are wrapped
In the sky-blue skirts
Of holy women and heroines, and red forgiveness
Runs down the aisles. We will hide our faces
And plant eggs
Like they were seeds. We will all
Be reborn.



photograph by DeviantArt user planetkat

Overactive, Daughter of the Pantheon

She opened her mouth wide and pushed the disk of the moon in,
held it on her tongue like the body of Christ.
Last week she had hit a cat with her car,
and as she buried its cooling heart commended
its soul to what gods as would find it
and weigh it properly,
and its body to the mounds of earth
just off the Post Road.
As the first drops of rain spotted her cheeks
she felt her feet growing together,
silver-scaled like armor.

Mummified Cat by Cassandra Barney

Melodramatic Moon

(Library Parking Lot, January Fifteenth)

"You're how full?" I asked.
"Half," she said, "Half, I am half-
full." She turned away.
Snowflakes blew toward her face and,
reaching her cheek,
disappeared against the expanse of white.

H(a)unting

She took the long way home.
As she crested a hill she saw it:
The cloud-murked moon, color of the setting city sun,
seated on the horizon like a broken bowl.

She doubted her eyes and drove on,
winding through streets of darkened houses,
peering down driveways, crawling past the bars and jewelers downtown.

It caught her around the corner of a bakery.
The sight of it squeezed her heart and took fistfuls
of her lungs,
and she drove on, eyes wide, mind still.