BLANK VERSE POEM

JAMIE TEWS

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HUNTER'S MOON

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Standing at the bay, we speculate
about a man sitting behind the moon, reeling it in
like a tricked fish. We’d see the sphere shrink in the sky
and the ocean would recede, leaving
seaweed and sharks flailing in its wake.

It’s the hunter’s moon, so everything is orange.
There’s a brassy beam cutting through the water,
docked boats the color of skinned salmon,
peaches in the eyes of my man.

I tell him the moon’s lore:
it’s the thing that spurred people
to collect and store meat for the winter.
He tells me he loves me,
and we whisper it back and forth,
the Atlantic ocean our audience.

I feel like I’m preparing for winter,
only instead of foraging for fruit,
me and him go for long walks
and sing songs to each other.
Only instead of drying meat,
he fries me eggs, I and kiss him
with onion in my breath.
We laugh because we’re in love, and
it might not always be this way.

It’s October, and we’re happy,
sappy with romance, but now there is so much
to lose, which is what I come back to at this bay,
standing with my man and the moon.

In love, I’m preparing for loss,
as though it’s inevitable
that he will stop loving me
and the moon will recede
and the ocean will dry,
as though winter is the end

to good things,
which isn’t true, of course,
and I repeat that in my head
while my man holds my body close to his
and sings harvest moon for the hunters

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Jamie got an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. You can find her work in Cleaver Magazine, Chestnut Review, Jellyfish Review, and others.