Two Moons, by Robin Rosen Chang

Helen Marten Moral clay (blind diagram), 2019 Nylon paint on fabric, ash frame, aluminum, cast Jesmonite 122 1/8 x 82 5/8 x 3 3/8 inches (310 x 210 x 8.5 cm). Courtesy of Greene Naftali Gallery and the artist.

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Two Moons 

The sun burns a hole like a window. Look through it. You see memory. You see yourself at a table. Next to it, a red crab, legs in half-fold. You look surprised, your eyes and mouth round, like the hole. It might be because of the crab, sitting like a dog, or the sketch on the easel, all sepia, no hue, unlike the world you think you live in. Maybe it doesn’t represent the [       ] you think it should. Look behind the door, into the kitchen. See the cheesecloth. Remember the feel of its weave as you wrapped vegetables in it, dropped them in the pot with the chicken. To the surface, scum rose. Later, everyone slurped the soup. Delicious, they chirped. Because the dill, feathery, lacy, with a taste that’s strong, lingering, like your memories. A taste with a kick staying on the tongue, on your fingers, in your body. Outside, a car zooming by. Now, caw-caw. Look out the window. You don’t see a crow, but fat grapes. The ones that are on your table. Also, the neighbour’s tree. It looks like a lanky adolescent, long-limbed, exploding green buds, rocking its hips. And the purple blossoms around the corner—how did you never notice that orgy before? But look out the other window. It’s brown. Smoke. There’s a fire somewhere. There’s always a fire somewhere because the planet is burning.  You see the moon refract through smog, splintering itself, split into two crescent moons. And the plume of smoke, illuminated.

Robin Rosen Chang

Robin Rosen Chang is a 2023 New Jersey Council on the Arts poetry fellow and the author of the full-length collection, The Curator’s Notes (Terrapin Books). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Plume, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Montclair State University. ​