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.

Brother

by Kat Gál


The prototype wasn’t good
It was damaged from the start
A new version was created
Six years later
A better version of me
A boy this time around
Fewer emotions
More confidence
More freedom
Fewer expectations
More independence
Less trauma
Less drama
A better life
Yet I still gave him my Red Bear
Because that’s love


* * * * *

Kat Gál is a writer, runner, traveler, bookworm, and cat-lover. She is Hungarian by birth, international by choice, and American by passport and currently resides in Milwaukee, WI. Kat is a freelance health writer and enjoys creative writing, running, and traveling in her free time. You can find her at katgalwriter.com.

 

I wasn’t raped (not another #metoo poem)

by Kat Gál


I wasn’t raped

No, I wasn’t raped

Yet I am left with shame
                           Scars
                           And forever pain

I wasn’t enough to be fucked (someone said)
But I wasn’t enough to be respected
All I was enough to be violated

I didn’t know what to do

No, it’s not happening,
It doesn’t make sense
I silently screamed inside
Puzzled 
Frozen

But no, I wasn’t raped

He pushed me against the table
Pressing his body against mine

What is happening?
It doesn’t make sense
I whispered: stop, no…
I wanted to cry
But cried only quietly inside

But no, I wasn’t raped

His skin didn’t touch mine
Not there, not inside, anyways
Only everywhere else
Body fluids were not exchanged
But I still feel him breathing down my neck

But no, I wasn’t raped

He was rubbing against me
Slowly at first, then faster and faster
Faster and faster
Until he collapsed on the top of me

But no, I wasn’t raped

But what happened anyways?

It wasn’t rape. 
Does it count as sexual assault,
Molestation
Any form of violation
When your clothes are not ripped off,
When your inside stays closed?

Yet, he still used MY clothed body
For HIS personal pleasure
WITHOUT MY consent

Yet, I wasn’t raped.

When he was finished,
He said ‘thank you’,
How polite
Then left silently

Left me frozen

I couldn’t move
I couldn't talk

There was nowhere to go
Noone to talk to

I’ve never spoken about it
I’ve never acknowledged it as we passed each other in the hallway 
Every day for the next months

He was my roommate after all
What could’ve I said to help me understand

What did I do wrong?
How did I deserve this?

What happened?

And how to move on?
Violated. Scared. Broken. Lost. Ashamed.

But no, I wasn’t raped.

No, I wasn’t raped.

But I still live with the forever pain and shame.


* * * * *

Kat Gál is a writer, runner, traveler, bookworm, and cat-lover. She is Hungarian by birth, international by choice, and American by passport and currently resides in Milwaukee, WI. Kat is a freelance health writer and enjoys creative writing, running, and traveling in her free time. You can find her at katgalwriter.com.

America in 1952

by Lorri Ventura


Mr.  Potato Head is a real potato
Festooned with purchased plastic facial features.
Ralph Kramden drives a Brooklyn bus
In search of happiness.

The birth rate is double what it was ten years earlier.
Relishing post-war prosperity,
Americans are mass consumers of all things material.
Owning a suburban home
Has become more affordable
Than renting a city tenement.
A nation economically unrivaled!

Life is simpler
Happier
Sweeter now 
Than ever before
Our descendants will reflect back longingly
On “the good old days”
And call us blessed

But women in 1952
Cannot sell or buy property
Control their own earnings,
Or draft their own wills

Children of color
Cannot attend a well-resourced
Integrated public school
And fewer than two of every ten black children
Have the opportunity to graduate from high school

Youngsters with disabilities 
Languish at home
Public school doors closed to them
Or live, warehoused, in institutions
Isolated from their families

Paupers
Petty criminals
Persons with mental illness
Subsist, quartered in dungeon-like facilities
Sterilized, lobotomized
To make life easier for the rest of us

People suspected of engaging in homosexual behavior
Are denied jobs and housing
And the United States Post Office
Reads our mail, destroying 
Any missives that hint of gay content

Rosy retrospection
Focusing on a decade
Of unprecedented growth
At the expense of our most vulnerable citizens
Paints a false picture
Of “good old days” that never were.


* * * * *

Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. She is new to poetry-writing. Her poems have been featured in several anthologies, in Red Eft Journal, Quabbin Quills, Mad Swirl, and AllPoetry. She is a three-time winner of Writing In A Woman's Voice's Moon Prize.

 

Close of Day

by Brooke Herter James

 
Nighthawks skim
the barn in pinking sky
while you spray 
the old wooden dinghy 
with soapy water,
a whole summer
washing away.
 
I should help—
but here I sit
on an overturned bucket
under evening’s spell,
thinking I never want
any of this to end.


* * * * * 
 
Brooke Herter James is the author of several poetry chapbooks and one children’s picture book. She lives in Vermont with her husband, two donkeys, a mess of chickens and a dog.
 

Flight

by Barbara Wimsatt


The low September sun
Emblazons the greens
Burnishes the gold
The breeze still gently soothing

The sweeping fingers of the maple
Still a caress
The scented air an opiate

A vision returns
Time for the monarchs 
To make their journey south

Was this just a dream
Long ago on a day such as this
We witnessed mesmerized
By fluttering and flowing
A myriad of orange wings
Spangling through green leaves 

Last year near the pond
Where a few milkweed grow
We reeled in wonder 
At the stunning aerobatics
Of two glorious monarchs
Flying in perfect formation 

This year the milkweed stood bare
Had they gone on their journey
Or were they just gone?

At night by candlelight
We sip wine and listen
To the frenzied dance/singing
Of courting katydids
And search for glints 
Of vanishing fireflies

Once we saw orange wings
In the park
Lightning like lights at night
Now we see streetlights

* * * * *

Barbara Wimsatt: Born during the Depression, parents lost their business; moved into 1 bedroom apartment; grew up during WW2: Victory gardens, running around the neighborhood, biking to the library, filling up basket with books. Father died when she was 9; Mother started working. College was inexpensive in those days. Worked for a year to start; then only summers to pay tuition. Majored in Literature, wrote poetry, switched to philosophy when there were virtually no women. Switched to psychology, worked as a clinician. Married a philosopher; had a wild lovely son. Finished a Psychology PhD on Women’s Careers. 

RIVERSIDE FAREWELL

by Sharon Whitehill


Parked near the river,
where black-eyed Susans
bend toward the last of the light

and pinkish swamp milkweed
illumines the dusk,  
they are past conversation, past tears.

Around them the tang of wet moss
drifts in from the water
and joins the dank odor

of river rock under the bridge,
the dry scent of midsummer weeds
and the gravel dust raised by their tires.

Brown eyes gaze into blue
as the whippoorwill trills its own name
and the river lilts slow water music,

then turn to follow a water bug’s shimmy
across the windshield.
When it vanishes into the gloom,

they straighten their clothes,
he starts up the car,
and the river runs on.


* * * * *

Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from West Michigan now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. In addition to poems published in various literary magazines, her publications include two scholarly biographies, two memoirs, two poetry chapbooks, and a full collection of poems. Her chapbook, This Sad and Tender Time, is due out winter 2024.