Christopher Hansard: [ Moon Rises]

moon rises

over the dry serrated earth

the last president of the united states

reaches into her handbag

and pulls out a packet

of  thin cigarettes

and a bottle of nail polish

old things from the old world

she lights and inhales

plasters the gaudy red upon her nails

her hand look like bunch of cherries

around her lie the remains

of her staff

the smell of the nail polish hangs in the air

she can hear it coming

like the rushing wind of her childhood

but she knows it’s the sea

when the moon rises,

she thinks, all of this

will look like a big lake,

she inhales

the air goes cold

the wave isn’t far now

the day the earth tilted