Back to Issue Twenty-One.

how to talk to the moon

BY BEN PURKERT

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raise your voice above   the lights of the city

the street sweeping   the hills the clouds

in no rush      clear your throat

loosen the knots      in your chest

like a hundred strings from a hundred

black balloons     there’s nothing

in the sky you can’t stab with a pin

there’s nowhere    too cool for a flag

everyone is welcome     even your friends

of friends     when the moon is full

the sea cranes     its long neck

the stars floating     on their backs

their lips     gone so blue

 

Ben Purkert’s first poetry collection, FOR THE LOVE OF ENDINGS, is coming out March 2018 from Four Way Books. A former New York Times Fellow at NYU, he’s published poems and essays in the New Yorker, Agni, Tin House Online, Ploughshares, Guernica, Kenyon Review, Boston Review, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. He currently teaches at Rutgers–New Brunswick and is working on a novel.

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