Two poems · Corinne Greiner

Lunar

A mathematician suggests the moon be exploded,
its mountains, dry seas, and craters crumbled

into a universe suddenly without menstruation,
croissant, moonbow, and hunting goddess wild

with breasts. He calculates Earth will teeter,
dimming inconvenient tides and slaying

seasons, the result summer eternal and glories
of wheat, cosmos redesigned for deathless

productivity. Afterward, without respite
from sparkling sun and blithe birds, no one ignites

bonfires or sings, because black oblivion
and hush are no longer the pith of everything,

and even the mathematician wearies
of lips grimacing with happiness, stained

by berries, each mouth a clown’s pert
smear of pretense and lifeless, dried crimson.



The Shallowness of the Visible

There is more life below ground than above,
so perhaps we are
on the wrong side of the world
and should be star-nosed moles,
wiggling the celestial
because it is part of us
and of the darkness;
our firmament, instead, is distant:
exotic specks and swirls
seen only when night masks
the glare without mercy
on our upright, fragile,
and unadorned heads.