Chloë Moore
New Eroticism
I am at my best when under something else.
A lover or a piece of furniture.
So there’s something between me and the sky.
And god is it dry here.
Valley refraction, also wind.
No one comes to fill the empty space.
Inconvenient, given the hole I dug.
Remembering the possibility of escape.
Everything in its proper place.
The coasters, the commas.
I have been called good for bad reasons.
Have relished the ecstasy of effort.
On Thursdays I clean the kitchen on my knees.
Poem Where I Learn to Take Things as They Are
I always see foxes exactly when I need to
which is a matter of lovely coincidence
though not indicative of anything in particular
about either me or the foxes,
which are just foxing around as they normally do,
and are immune to my projections,
inoculated against simile as are
the auroras which emerge after though not
because of another round of my sobbing and which illuminate
pinkly and greenly the tender sky over my small
rudimentary porch and which again
mean nothing and care for me not at all,
this being a lucky thing I think, easier to know
the stars as stars and not as maps of gods,
better just to watch the foxes,
the auroras, to notice the simple facts
of their existence, the unsymbolic penchant of my knees
and elbows for bending, forward, into the sweet weight
of the splendid, mindless night
Semiotics
It could’ve been the patchouli residue of a kiss
left on my clavicle or the maple tree pinking the sidewalk corner
in the thorny autumn night. Desperation makes anything
a sign. The stars were fragile in their spiderwebs. I was breathing
in time to the red blink of the radio tower while the wind
made agile oscillations between clouds.
The night stung like blowing on an open wound.
I was a nervous creature in my light jacket
in a heavy mist, spiky trickle of sweat. It could’ve been
smoke or fog that was creeping up the valley.
Either way the opacity was total, false eclipse.
The lightning haunting the hills was incidental
to the drama. No meaning to be made
of the goose egg moon. The future has come,
then gone. I am what I know how to be.
Chloë Moore is a writer from Central New York. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chanter Magazine, The Water~Stone Review, and HNDL Magazine. She currently lives in Missoula, MT, where she is pursuing an MFA in poetry and befriending the neighborhood deer.
Artwork: “title” by Daniel Lurie
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