The Moon’s Instructions to a Young Girl at a Meeting of the Lunar Society, by Mikki Aronoff

An Experiment on a Bird with the Air Pump, by Joseph Wright of Derby (UK) 1768.

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The Moon’s Instructions to a Young Girl at a Meeting of the Lunar Society
           
Let go your sister’s sash
as you watch the caged
bird gasp, its once
 
puffed chest stretched
against the bubble
of glass. Unfurl
 
your brow as you eye
the bird’s white winged
flutter, its pink tongue
 
flicking for air,
grey eyes dulling.
Uncurl your sister’s
 
fingers, gentle
on your neck. Let go
of clenched churning.
 
Hold fast flame’s
fevered reflections,
observe light’s flickers
 
licking at the bird’s
closing gift to you.
Draw in bright
 
crimson’s mercy,
my auspices
long abandoned
 
but for the light I shed
for your long walk
home.

Mikki Aronoff

Mikki Aronoff’s work has appeared in The Lake, EastLit, Virga, Bearing the Mask: Southwest Persona Poems, Love’s Executive Order, bosque7, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, SurVision, Love Like Salt, London Reader, Popshot Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere. A New Mexico poet, she is also involved in animal advocacy.