seated around a soup bowl of the moon,
the rim of a fox den,
the lisp of a secret woe.
Like workers in a famous dizzying photograph,
& deer below browse fleeting glades
with this almost unconscionable ability to wait.
Up there, the alabaster soup is chalky and grainy,
bad to eat, but they require the longing it imparts.
If they split in half, reaching for something in between,
deeper is the need to drink it.
Moonfeeders, once eaten of the celestial,
also, of their wine bottles whole,
write sonnets and symphonies with spoons and forks,
skewer produce and meats
with a secret cache of Ticonderoga.
They dive into the sublingual pool,
where spines survive the crash landing.
The meal of life, just deep enough.
They float like in an Epsom bath, deader, still,
than twenty lives of salt
hunkered in the wounds.
Lain flat in the pool in the sky,
such a sea, but a film,
is still just deep enough to drown in.
Russell Zintel (he/him) lives in the Catskills with his fiance KT and their cat. His poems have appeared in decomP magazinE, Sledgehammer Lit, Jupiter Review, and elsewhere.
photo by Max Griss and Mike Petrucci (via unsplash)
Crow & Cross Keys 