volume 9
Low Hangs the Moon
by Robert Klein Engler
And anyone whose name was not found written
in the Book of Life was cast into the tank of fire.
—Revelation 20: 15
Gift
It is simple, the act of touching, two bodies lying under blankets, each one warm from the other's warmth. As the day descends to darkness, each heart pulses like a drum, like a clock wound in the womb. How easy we touch in the darkness, white dots of fire in our eyes, the blanket of sleep under our arms. It is simple, how he gets up and looks out the window at the cover of snow on the hill, the blue frosting of moonlight divided by black tree forks, it is simple, how the cigarette smoke rises against the frost, and the red tip of ash contends with the stars to the west--I know we are salt and earth, and while I sleep, he departs, to wed silence and walk among the palms. We never speak again of snow, never share salt again, it is simple, how we separate and sleep alone.
First Snow
Once the falling starts, it never stops. It begins with the leaves falling. The sky becomes a hollow bowl. Wind rushes with the clarity of bells, slapping flags against the air. What orbits from above will rescue us? Once the falling starts, it never stops.
Time and Space
Landing at Orlando in the half rain, I step outside and look at the sky. December is split in two--the North, pine and snow, the South, coconut and palm. The days have folded on themselves. Above, seagulls haunt the cloudy air like circling kites above a field. They cry down their prophecy of loss. Look, I say to them, don't haunt me, I only come to loaf and invite my soul. Later, at the Space Center, I watch as they serve food children like--pink hot dogs, tasteless Popsicles. A girl tongues an ice cream cone, a boy fellates a chocolate banana. It was here earth heard an insufferable noise, saw fire ruining with fire. It was pure fire, the fluid essence of heat, pouring from the Saturn V rocket in one stream of flame, thick as an ingot. Yet, today the spigots are cold. Like Roman columns toppled from the Forum, the rockets lie in sections on the lawn. Nearby, a museum of auxiliaries stands up like Druid stones. Empty engines yawn a cave for birds. Tourists worship them by taking photographs. Afterwards, they buy newspapers and shake their heads in disbelief. What hunger makes a man consume himself?
White Castles
He sees the boy go to the drugstore for a card. John goes nearby for a coke. There he can wait and watch and be ready. The light around here has the mood of madness. Do shades of neon ever make you wish you were other than what you are? How do you find a way to the impossible verbs of holding, falling, touching, strangling? What should be said is that John can't really come right out and say what's happening. Let us simply remove beginnings and ends, remove the moon too, because it troubles him. Stars, scattered like small change, are allowed, but the moon, cold blue over a field of snow, the moon is too much a book of spells, too much a mirror, to much a devilish clown.
Traveling in Winter
Black trees, open to the cold like lungs. A life holds only so many names. The sun bends low over blue hills, exposing it all like a surgeon.
Countdown
Everywhere in Florida the body count makes news. First six. Now fourteen. Maybe thirty. The Miami Herald for December 30th, 1978, reports: Meanwhile, Friday, Sheriff's officers dug up part of a lot owned by Gacy, but nothing was found. We have to check it out, because you never know.... A rocket to the moon has fifteen million parts. Rabbi Simelai teaches a man has 248 members. Does a snapping in the brain make a man kill for cock? Now that he rests in leather cuffs, how many parts make him whole?
Tonight the damp air hangs down like moss. A swampy moonlight drapes the bay. As Florida revolves to calm, I stand on the white legs of memory and look across Key Biscayne. A cool descent of rain adds nails to the night. The body count is up to twenty-one. I came here to look into the mirror of my heart. Other formulas have found me out. Soon the space shuttle will hang in orbit like a gull. In some northern cell, the habit that conjured death circles frictionless about a madman's skull.
The cotton silence of a tropic night descends. It follows the small rain down. I followed my passion to this swamp, like a man following fire to the moon. Time winnows the gift from my hands. Past fulfillment, I have nothing more to hold. Across the bay, the full moon slips behind clouds. A transparent breath ripples the dark water as an alien feeling comes over me with a chill. Suddenly, the moon appears again, ocular above the blood, black bay, a low moon, white, with an eye for fire.
Lethal Injection
The Greeks believed there was a river where the souls of the dead would drink--the River Lethe--the river of forgetfulness. There the dead would drink and forget the coiled days of this sleepy life, there they forget their names. I dreamed once of my dead mother. She lived in a golden city in the sky. Nevertheless, she still ate hamburgers, the one thing in her senility she desired. Mother, will we forget our names, forget thirst, hunger, and desire's hot plug? When the jelly of death flows through your veins, John, think of beauty wasted, his golden hair scalped and soiled. Think of the way worms feast on youth and giggle. Try to forget the eyes, the names, and the hard-ons gone limp. I have not heard one word of remorse. The dead are still dead. What golden city awaits them on the far side of the moon? There may be a river from which the dead drink. It may be the river of forgetting. Still, the living know. The living remember.
Etchings
In the clear night air, a careless bell rings and rings. The moon comes up jangling icicles of light. After their bodies are burned, all that remains are teeth. What is more breathtaking than blood on the snow?
War of the Flowers
I find nothing from the old dictionaries to explain it, nothing tells the end the way we want to hear it, finally, convincing, clicking shut like a box. Today the sun is eclipsed, tonight the moon passes above smoke and steel. The body is taken away, chairs folded, a drape drawn across a field of silence. I am resigned now to living in the hollow of what could have been. My bones cannot take any more the weight of someone else's dreams, or the batting of their black lashes. Unlike the Indies, no great fleets followed men to the moon--it is still without graves. No wind disturbs the waffled footprints of those who leaped quickly home. I did not want to bind my love by fire, yet the lightning of his name still finds me out. Let me forget it, the way the snow forgets, melting into flowers the moon pulls open.
Spitting Out Words
I dreamt the full moon rolled past my window and I had the moon in my mouth and it was like the ball of a seed all covered with burrs that stuck to my tongue and lips and I rolled the black needles of the moon out from my mouth and woke up--dry, free, open.
Back to volume 9
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Robert Klein Engler lives in Chicago and sometimes in New Orleans. Born on the southwest side of the city, Robert taught many years at Richard J. Daley College, until he was banned by the chancellor. After resolving a Chicago Commission on Human Relations complaint against the City Colleges, which he wrote about in his book A Winter Of Words, Robert went on to become an adjunct professor at Roosevelt University. Robert holds degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana and the University of Chicago Divinity School. He has received 2 Illinois Arts Council awards for his poetry. Just Google his name to find his writing on the Internet.