Lodestar Quarterly

Lodestar Quarterly
Figure reaching for a star Issue 3 • Fall 2002 • Poetry

how I survived the great mammal die-off of 2001

Sara S. Moore

my lover died in the great mammal die-off of 2001
she took joyous mornings, fluffy coffee, excellent conversations
she took a doomsday mind too
when we've all gotten anthrax, cancer, or been bombed to death
the insects will be left
she loved insects -- a challenge to draw
she had a porcelain white plate of
red leaves
butterflies
and moths
a monarch in a frame we bought at paxton gate
a museum of freakish dead things
is now an altar icon where she died
that time she also bought a porcupine quill with a pen nib and
a long seed pod we decided wasn't safe to make into a dildo
we folded into eachother at night
our great mammal snuggle-up of 2001
but late in the night I'd hear the
scratching of her pen nib on paper
ticking the side of the glass jar
and unwilling to wake me some nights
she'd spin off to the great deep couch
where her neon blue phone glowed
I'd find her coccooned in the comforter
a small pod being
folded up, her sweet nectar-filled form
waiting for tendrils of sound, door and footsteps
to drag me into her body
and feed on my warmth
changing me from
a blinking morning worm
to something beautiful
with her magic words
my precious one

Sara Moore is a 29-year-old poet and queer activist/organizer who has lived and performed on open mic stages since she was 17 and in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1995. She leads the curator team of the queer spoken word series San Francisco in Exile. Her work has been published in Silverfish Review, Kye Zine, Crossing Centuries, and Crescent Moon Anthology of Pagan Verse. Her new self-published effort is Aunt Sara's Little Corner of Grief.

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