Jessica Coles

the sky is flirting with me 

This morning’s sky puts on 

its cloud-pout, wispysexy, made up like 

it’s been watching 

lip tutorials on YouTube.

It’s not doing this for me, doesn’t care 

if I look—but doesn’t mind 

if I notice, doesn’t mind if I 

say hello, say a prayer, thank a God 

I officially don’t speak to 

for making a sunrise so red 

I want to trace its lips 

with my finger, let it bite 

my knuckles, before we decide 

it’s better to take things slow.

My sweet sunrise only has a few more 

seconds before the sun’s feet hit 

the horizon and the sky throws on its blue 

dress for an ecstatic ritual I never learned.

This evening, the serious sky begs me 

to invent a religion, asks if I remember 

how to turn colour into prayer.

Which colour? I ask. What prayer? 

It smooths on cloud-silver gloss

with a crescent moon wink:

tells me to pucker up.

we're changing all the declaratives to interrogative and isn't that a mood

When I interrogate science, 

all I have is belief in a sunset. 

The sunset smiles too slick, I twist 

a heel on the horizon. Too many gods 

claim to be the sun. I swallow it 

like the old goddess I never was. I am

in no mood for immortality.

the moon is not confused

The moon pretends you are a moth. It tells you one precise secret each month. Precision is a blade of grass trimmed using mandibles you learned how to construct out of wood chips and chicken wire on YouTube. You know moths don’t have mandibles. You uncurl your tongue to lap the syrup from a pansy’s yellow heart. You think the moon looks purple when it tells you secrets. Someone you still love knows the symbolism of purple moons. Moths' wings dust your tongue with fragments of months. Moonlight scatters the secret of impermanence like grass clippings on the sidewalk. The moth pretends it is you, a yellow moon, a curled tongue laden with secrets.