THE MOON IS A LIGHTHOUSE: REVISITED

Night after night after night after night we go, us brothers do, and look for the moon. Some nights the moon, even if the both of us brothers were boys born blind, we could feel it shining with our hands. On other nights, nights when the white of the moon is a lighthouse light no eyes or hands could see it in its whereabouts hiding, even on those nights, though, we know it is out there, in the dark, darkly shining, because we, us brothers, us boys, we can hear it sing. When the moon sings, us brothers, to the moon's crooning, we sit up in bed, we slip out of bed, and with our hands cupped round our ears we try to €nd where the moon is sleeping, figure out where it is hammocked between two stars. And on nights when the moon, it is cut in half, nights when it is half a brother, us brothers, one of us, we will go back inside into our own place of hiding, this, we figure, so that the moon won't feel so unwhole. And what about those other nights, those nights when the moon, it is a slipper made of ice, or glass, or star light? On nights such as those, we go and we get Girl and then we tell Girl to slip her muddy foot into the moon. When Girl slips her muddy foot into the moon, every time, the moon, with Girl's foot in it, it is a perfect fit. So then we sit back and watch Girl tip toe and tap dance the moon across the night time's sky, dancing until the sun sits up and begins to clap its hands, it stands up with its clapping, until this clapping turns to light.

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THE MOON IS A MOUTH, A BANJO, A DRUM

In the bunk bed that is above my head, Brother leans with his head over the edge to ask me, Brother, what is that sound? Us brothers, often at night, we hear sounds that brothers other than us, they do not hear them. Oh but this, this sound, there is no not hearing this sound. This sound, it is a song that is better than singing. This sound, the sound of it—its voice—it is coming not just from some body's mouth. This sound, it is coming from someplace else where the mouth that is making this sound—it is just one hole on that body. Outside our room, the moon, it is a hole in the sky where a light is pouring through. Us brothers, here in this light for us boys to look up at the sky by, we are standing up tall and tippy toe high so we are looking eye to eye with the moon. The moon, Brother tells me this, looks like a banjo. So Brother's eye sees this like this. Brother makes with his mouth that sound that a banjo makes when a banjo's being fingerpicked by a hand that knows just what it is doing. The moon, tonight, banjo bellied, it is so big and it is so white that its bigness is bigger than the sky that is behind it—that black night mud that holds the moon up in all of its light. Tonight, this moon: it's not a banjo the way that Brother says he sees it. No, the moon, tonight: this moon is a wide open mouth that, in this brother's eyes, this moon has swallowed up the rest of its body. And so what we do, look at us brothers as we do this doing, we reach up with our muddy boy hands to push this light back into this moon's mouthy hole. But the moon, to us brothers too, the moon in all of its whiteness, it swallows us brothers up inside. Inside, there is this light here on the inside of this place. In this light, us brothers, we see that the moon, it is not a banjo. The moon, it is a drum. And us brothers, here inside, down in this hollowed out space, we are the sound that the moon sometimes makes when we pound, when we hammer, when we nail, when we bang: we hit, and hit, our muddy fists up against it.

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These two stories are excerpted from the chapbook, The Moon Is A Lighthouse, recently published by New Michigan Press, and available [here].