The Western Hemisphere is asleep
with one great eye cocked open
fastened to the burning stars that used
to guide women and men to their future
and at first glance one may mistake
it for dead and not be far wrong
the body collapsed in front of a barren
library huddled under incalculable layers
of coarse blankets and buffalo hides, with
one prehistoric hand trust bravely forth
clutching an ash stick that looks more
suited for fertility rituals than walking
a cigar burns incongruously out the
side of the fertile mouth with lips
that bloom like wild mustard through concrete
and just to the north the obscene mustache
cured by the smoke and in danger of
catching fire itself or disappearing
and the beard, a dangerous whirl of knotted
wool and shadows is littered with objects
gathered off the street, flecks of leaves
and black earth, dried and brittle remains
of lottery tickets, chards of shell and bone
pages torn ruefully from literary magazines
some still smoldering as if recently issued
from a smoke stack, and if you look deeper
an underground canopy teeming with dark
insectile faces, a cosmos of imaginary life
and death, ten thousand years of tearful
wondering, bald eagle feathers, discarded
rattlesnake skins petrified by the vacuous
terror and loneliness in the one good eye.
Steve Moore formally studied theoretical physics and abstract mathematics but now has no time for such nonsense. Since college, he has wandered restlessly about North America and Europe, and has lived in such disreputable places as Liverpool, England; Carrboro, North Carolina and most recently Carrollton, Georgia where he currently resides with his family. He is a now full-time student of urban planning and father of two precocious kids. His free time is spent working on his poetry, short fiction and long unfinished novel. His poem, ‘Love in the Time of Vinyl Siding’ was recently published in the 2013 edition of Eclectic, the Arts and Literary Magazine of the University of West Georgia. His short story, ‘Incident at Oscuro’, appeared in The Fabulist’s 2010 anthology, and his poem, ‘The Bride’, was one of the winning entries in the 2009 Cardiff Academy International Poetry Contest.
