Five poems by
Daniel
Edward
Moore
​
63 a Pandemic and Me
​
Queerer my god to thee finds me cutting days
into birthday brownies breaking lines of poems
with chocolate pecans who give up the ghost
on the easy way down this hallelujah shoot’s ladder of love
Oh, sister me in Jesus my favorite flavor not found
among the choices in isle # 3 at Safeway on Sunday in my
Liz Taylor gloves bringing baby blue back to harmonize
with my face and its royal symphonic thong
Amazing space how sweet the sound little mouths make
pushing heavy breaths out in confessionals made
out of portals so public the private is shamed to think
that forgiveness could ever clean such vicious viral behavior.
​
Come Closer
​
Far enough away to make skin the ground of sorrow,
the least you can say is
come closer,
the least I can do is tell death it’s a plow dulled by bones.
Later, when we gather in the aftermath of anguish,
survivors will recall how homes became castles
and dressing up as Royalty was the tower of each day.
With you in acres of lavender lace and me in crimson velvet,
the old life has no appeal. The past will not snuff torches on the walls.
Above the moat a bridge will not bow to a horse’s gallop.
Dying
Not at this unlikely moment.
Not because someone has yet to be born
who plays an essential part in your future
a breakable, burnable, handheld part.
Not at the end of brief lifelines
sprawling across your palms like a desert,
those acres of sand’s white failure to grow
something gorgeous your past could not see
entombed in the cactus of sorrow's cement.
Not between for and against with
barbedwire lips praising pro-life shadows
of silos shaped like American breasts
teasing heaven with nuclear milk.
Not for the sake of Mother Mary.
Not so the bulb in one dead star
can dream about shining again.
​
​
The Arraignment
You of all breaths
should remember
those reckless nights
others took you
deep into themselves
​
making you a bed
in their pulmonary palace
where gorgeous gondolas
painted with blood
carried whispers
through ear canals.
Stunned by how easily
tomorrow was ruined
by the romantic need
to be heard, this poem
is a flare from the
gun of my tongue.
​
You of all breaths
on the trigger must know
that holding a stranger
with lips is a crime.
Tell me, how do you plead?
​
​
Things Got Really Quiet
​
Even the sound of Northwest rain
could not wash the stains of breath
off the body’s walls.
The exquisite excuses made by god
as the tube left my throat for the garbage
became a nurse’s song of praise to
faithful Saint Disposable.
A stranger in the bed next to me said
rescue is the sky’s red wings
flapping on the shore of your veins,
as a Cardinal kissed the window hard
before anointing the hospital ground
where things got really quiet.
​
Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His poems are forthcoming in Nixes Mate Review, Lullwater Review, El Portal, Emrys Journal, The Meadow, West Trade Review, Toho Journal, Muddy River Poetry Review, The Lindenwood Review and Sheila-Na-Gig Pandemic Anthology. He is the author of Boys (Duck Lake Books) and Waxing the Dents (Brick Road Poetry Press).