The Friday Poem on 16/07/21
Emma Simon’s poem ‘Part of me can’t hear the moon calling any more’ speaks to every woman’s experience of seasonality, the monthly pull of menstruation and the mixed feelings that arrive when this time passes. While we often curse ‘the curse’ — it’s ineluctable call, its occasionally ill-timed arrival — its passing can be felt as a loss. Simon’s poem approaches its subject with insight and compassion, and her language is crafty and delightful.
Part of me can’t hear the moon calling any more
Isn’t it always the same, within a crisis
another smaller crisis following its own orbit.
For years now I’ve been singing to her tunes
listening to the pluck of strings inside me,
a grate of pebbles raked back by the tide.
Moons are like gods, they’re not restricted
to the night. She’d stalk me at odd times,
appearing in a shower, or as I stood
with nothing to protect me in a changing room.
More often though she’d slip between my legs
slick and tangled up in last night’s sheets.
I’ve watched moonlight drip through windows,
puddling in splashes on the bathroom floor,
felt her fingers tightening their grip. But now
she pretends not to know me. Though I cursed
her stupid dance, this hunt, it’s kind of lonely
watching her up there, peeling off one mask,
then slipping on another. I feel two empty holes
where her eyes should be. I am lost to time
where distances are measured out in years,
and all the little stars inside extinguished,
one by one, they’re blinking out their lights.
