Lunar Energy

by Zack Rogow

I challenge the existence of the moon
for the following reasons:
She doesn't work regular hours
I've never sifted her platinum dust in my hands
She creates a barrier to important rockets
She costs as much to maintain as the Acropolis
I don't believe in her spongy gravity
There's already a Man in the Moon
The moon is too beautiful her color
is too much like silk
The poet Li Po drowned when he tried to kiss the moon
in a drunken lake 8th century A.D.
Some nights she looks so close
so amazingly round
that I feel I know her better than anyone else
But the moon is too full she'll never feel for me
Or sometimes she's such a pointy sliver she doesn't really count
And she looks too good naked
And the tides are lying to us
And the moon won't fit in the gibbous belly of a woman
But still I want that moon

Zack Rogow has published three previous collections of poetry, including A Preview of the Dream (Gull Books). His poems have appeared in a variety of magazines, from The American Poetry Review to Switched-on Gutenberg on the World Wide Web.  His French translations include Andre Breton's Earthlight, which was a co-winner of the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Award.  He teaches at the University of San Francisco and UC/Berkeley.

Updated 6/8/04

Zack Rogow
The Selfsame Planet
Paper, saddlestitched, 40 pp 
$7.50 plus s&h
1999, ISBN 0-932412-15-7