Lodestar Quarterly

Lodestar Quarterly
Figure reaching for a star Issue 14 • Summer 2005 • Poetry

The moon alleges and the feather pillow knows

Paul G. McCurdy

The moon alleges that we are in love
and the feather pillow knows -- Ask it:
nighttime, a murmur, and I am held. Different,
this: warmth in a cold world, how sleep is heat,
how cool is light of day. Beneath electric blankets,
in atmosphere of quilt, our two bodies, fervid,
exchange cotton warmness. On other nights,
on planets circling wasted stars, I slept alone
in tents of my own clothes. Mornings I brushed
blue frost off naked limbs, shook snowflakes
off pale eyelashes. Under electric pelts we join skins.
Behind us, a headboard cackles and would tear us apart.
Above us winds rage, threatening to pull down
the pictures we have hung around the walls.
But nothing bends so well as love and then is right again.
The olive warmth of your flesh, the cool shadow of your skin:
these are secrets of the moon. The feather pillow,
waxing, waning, knows its own purpose,
that of the moon, and ours.

Paul G. McCurdy grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia but moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in January 2003. His poetry has appeared in the journal Lynx Eye, Red River Review, and SoMa Literary Magazine, and a short story is expected to appear in Best Gay Love Stories 2006. He lives in San Francisco with his boyfriend. More is available at his blog, Zauberwelt.

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