Susan Moon

Day 28

Death has been passing by
with habitual haste. My dreams skelter
through scenes of the undead,
their inventive ways of perishing.
Last night it was a zombie slitting
a woman's eye with a splinter. I wake
with eyes wide open in wonderance
of how I am no longer me. It is not
that I am beyond recognition
but when this pelvic floor quakes
to pit & pith heed my warning.
No longer am I your trusty mutt.
I love you
but these teeth cut callous
and cannot be held accountable. Keep me,
my likeness, in your memory,
something to come back
to when I am far-gone
for several moons. Thinning
moons are all I've held onto
since packing up my childhood
home. I could not stop myself
half a decade later from approaching the house
languishing in a cul-de-sac—its strange lawn,
impenetrable curtains, previously pristine
teal siding peeled to mockery.
Here along the trellis is where
my father grew peonies. The deck is hacked
to splinters, a thousand tiny teal stakes
pointing up towards heaven's naked eye.
I used to somersault the backyard in a cratered groove
till the ground gave out.

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Susan Moon is a Korean American poet and MFA candidate at the Writer’s Foundry of St. Joseph’s College. Her coordinates for home fall between the US, China and Korea. She currently resides in Brooklyn.