| TO A CELLAR SPIDER By Elizabeth Vignali Reflection in the Window at the RedlightHis transparent hands lift pockets of blanknessand set them alight, bright flames birthed in reflection.This methodical heft and lift and flick of the red Bic lighteris his bartender ritual, sacred rite at the Redlight.The best part of his day: when he raiseshis tray of a dozen fires, bright flickering hymns.When he gifts stars to every dark table. To a Cellar SpiderSplayed and pale x-ray of a star. You’re the living thing inside it that beats across the sky.Radiant on your web, your scratched and milky gnat-spattered nebula. Fragile arachnid, apex knees pupil-dark and just as seeing.They blink as each chevron leg stretches along the wall. They watch the universe bend around them.Carry your convections along the glass spectrum of your exoskeleton. Carry your convictions.Luminous giant crawling across the void— when did your catechism last go unanswered? Her ReductionIt’s the solo ferry ride, of all things. The unsunblocked patch on my back, not having to listen to Tom Petty, finishing a chapter.The lovers fetch each other’s sweatshirts from the car and smile at their cameras. They align shoulders to measure the constancyof the horizon. They ask each other how much longer till we get there. Josephine Baker breezes along through my earbuds.Her voice cracks on I. I wonder whether she and I can be we or if the glaucous-winged gulls with their careening blackless feathers can be we or if the grains of sand lisping beneath my shoes can be we.The moon scrubbed down to scarfskin and the lovers claiming even her reduction.Even the scant of her white eyelash. Fragrance Lakethe trillium’s palmist symmetry a fortune in life-lined petals ancient fern, leaflets plunged to their hilts in stained rachis bone green tongue stones, nettled fossils blinking their stingsfaces turned to the rain roots buried in lightno tow-headed fairies under these toadstools just the brushed locks of golden calyptras redstem bentleaf and purple wall moss— common and obvious— and silver cushion’s larcenous awns reflecting someone else’s colorand yet the light sponging under the surface the light beaked slender in clumps of fernwhile lovers’ moss on rotten stumps tremble spores on their wet fingertips NocturneI I warm my hands with a tin cup of hot chocolate and rum, keep vigil under the lunar eclipse while the children conjure the maundering bats; they throw stones in the water and up in the air to summon the wild inky creatures.They circle the subdued moon with small fingers sure of their dominion.See the slick and shiny part? one says to the other. That’s the moon smiling.II Somewhere in the ocean right now there’s a warm-blooded moonfish, tinfoil skin so thin a fingernail can scrape it away. Fins red as though he has already been speared.Even science can’t explain how he heats not only the cold blood in his veins but also the ocean around him— how he wills his heart hot.III The match pins light to the tip of my cigarette, an illicit ash lamp outside my sleeping daughters’ window under the blue bowl of sky chipped with stars.The eclipse is ending and the sun’s light salvages the moon from earth’s shadow, parcels out the gleam in luminous increments.I tell myself I’m not lingering to see if I, too, am worth saving.IV Moonfish, you bring the night with you like a gift, cup it in your cool hands, carry it in the pockets of the jacket you press against my sleepy indoor skin.You are still sleeping when I get up in the dark of early morning. You sleep like one who wants to be caught.The moon is so bright my retina makes room for it.A semi-permanent place so everywhere I lookthere’s a moon. |
 | Elizabeth Vignali is an optician and writer in Bellingham, Washington. Her poems have appeared in various publications, including Willow Springs, Cincinnati Review, Tinderbox, Natural Bridge, and Nimrod. Her chapbook, Object Permanence, is available from Finishing Line Press. |