This month's Moon Prize, the 124th, goes to Anna Citrino's evocative poem "Speaking of Desire."


Speaking of Desire
Adah, 1911
Des Moines, Iowa

by Anna Citrino


We’ve moved to Des Moines.
Gerard is learning carpentry and making cabinets.
His father wanted his help at his shop.

Like my father, Gerard’s father is a religious
man with demanding expectations.
Unlike my father, he is kind.

As before marriage when living at Lenore
and Jed’s house, I wash clothes, cook,
keep house. There’s a lot I don’t
understand about relationships and living
with a man, but I do know I want to be more
than simply useful to Gerard, more than
a helpful assistant, chosen because I happen
to be there, the way a paintbrush
might be selected for a needed task.

I want to be valuable.
Not for what I can do,
or who I remind him of:
his sister who shares my same name,
his first wife who died in childbirth,
a woman he joins in bed,
or some role I fill,
but for myself.

Gerard works at the shop all day.
Evenings he labors at the desk
over the business’s books he keeps
for his father. We both work long hours.

Setting work aside to wander down a road
hoping to discover something unexpected—
that is what I long for. A spring afternoon
beside the river, our voices mingled with
water and a cedar waxwing’s whistle,
or us walking under a cottonwood’s flame
that burns into a cloudless sky—these
are what I wish for—life full with possibility,
open like the plains.

I want Gerard to reach for my hand,
gather me to him in a smile that says
I matter more than the role
given me, more than all the rules
about clean houses in paradise,
ledgers between us balanced.


* * * * *

"Speaking of Desire" is part of Anna Citrino's growing longer work of related poems. More poems from the longer work will be posted here on December 14 and December 15, 2023.

Anna Citrino is the author of A Space Between, and Buoyant,  Saudade, and To Find a River. Anna taught abroad in six different countries: Turkey, Kuwait, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, India, and the UK. Her work has appeared in Bellowing Ark, Canary, Evening Street Review, Indelible, Paterson Literary Review, phren-z, Poppy Road Review, and the Porter Gulch Review, among other literary journals. On most any day you can find her going for walks near the coast or biking on paths through rolling hills where she lives in Sonoma County, California. Read more of her writing at annacitrino.com.