Anonymous Lyric
It was the summer of 1976 when I saw the moon fall down.
It broke like a hen’s egg on the sidewalk.
The garden roiled with weeds, hummed with gnats who settled clouds on my
oblivious siblings.
A great hunger insatiate to find / A dulcet ill, an evil sweetness blind.
A gush of yolk and then darker.
Somewhere a streetlamp disclosed the insides of a Chevy Impala—vinyl seats, the rear- view,
headrests and you, your hand through your hair.
An indistinguishable burning, failing bliss.
Because the earth’s core was cooling, all animals felt the urge to wander.
Wash down this whisper of you, the terrible must.
Maybe the core wasn’t cooling, but I felt a coolness in my mother.
That girl was shining me on.
In blue crayon, the bug-bitten siblings printed lyrics on the walls of my room.
I wrote the word LAVA on my jeans.
It must be the Night Fever, I sang with the 8-track.
But the moon had not broken on the sidewalk, the moon
was hot, bright as a teakettle whistling outside my door,
tied up in sorrow, lost in my song, if you don’t come back . . .
and that serious night cooled, settling like sugar on our lawn.
I wrote the word SUGAR on my palms.
I shall say what inordinate love is.
The moon rose itself up on its elbows and shook out its long hair.
Connie Voisine, "Anonymous Lyric" from Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream. Copyright © 2008 by Connie Voisine. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
Source: Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream (The University of Chicago Press, 2008)