Donald Illich

Moon Poem

I cannot get enough of the moon
how it makes werewolves of us all,
tearing apart new clothes, swearing
this time will be the last with her.

Its light is solid – hold it in your hands.
You can throw it at opposing defenses
in a tight spiral of night. You can
eat it on a deserted island, no others
around to tell you it's not food.

In the evening you can bathe in it,
pour it hot enough so steam rises
from your body when you leave the tub,
the mirror and window full of craters.

When it still exists in the sky
in the morning, I'm glad to say
that I wave at it, thanking it
for being our only hope up there,
close enough that we can visit
if we really try, our sweet sister
who bakes romance and leaves it
on the window sill for us to steal.

I'm happy when it starts to reappear
after disappearing within the month.
Give me a ladder and I'd climb to it.
I'd plant one on its shining face.

---

Throwing Empty Coke Bottles at You

It is the only way I can express my love.

To throw another empty toward your window,
most of them hitting the brick facade
of your average two-story home. I wonder
if you're near the panes, if there's a chance
I can hit you with shards of glass.

Or if you're trying to ignore my efforts,
watching TV in a bedroom carpeted
floor to ceiling, letting detective shows
carry you to the scenes of fictitious crimes.

Maybe you're twisted like a fetus
on the kitchen floor, wishing for another
birth, where there's no such thing
as bottles, and people drink from cups
on yards full of green and nothing else.

I could stop tossing them day and night.

I could go home and fix a microwave
dinner, wait till it cools on the plate.

I could pass out in my brown armchair,
a book about murder left in my lap.

I could even dress for work under a sky
I believe is my own for once, the desk
waiting for me, pencils and pens arranged
in containers, each thing ready for use.

Another bottle crashes. It hits the lawn.
Fireflies start to glow in the ones I have left.

Donald Illich has published work in LIT, Passages North, Nimrod, and other journals. He was a semi-finalist for the Boston Review/'Discovery' Poetry Contest. He lives in Rockville, Maryland.