ABIGAIL SWOBODA
CILANTRO
​
Sturgeon moon, fruit moon, grain moon, barley moon, green corn moon—mom and me and the
cat are picking coriander seeds to Coltrane in the kitchen mixing vodka and wine when I realize
that it’s impossible for me to love anyone else the way I love you, and so I go to the bathroom to
piss out the preservatives
and I look in the mirror at my zoetrope face of a thousand faces where a thousand mouths expel a
thousand copies of my voice that echoes in my head with the inevitability of a prayer and I yearn
for the silence of snow. Once, I dreamed that you lived in a treehouse above which I could see
the lunar cycle suspended there in the sky by invisible strings of divinity, and I think I’m coming
to visit you there now; I think I’m getting closer to you, and between my handlebars I am
swollen and pink like the sun that chases me and the August moon down the road while I wonder
if I am a warm, dense thing that sits at the bottom of your chest, too.
​
​
CLOSED EYES AS BLACK OBSIDIAN
​
Scrying with the backs of my eyes on the itchy grass carpet of August afternoon,
I see my headlights crest the horizon, nearly skimming the apricot underbelly
of next October’s moon, when the wind will be soft like roadkill.
And when, through the lukewarm apple crumble of late-night radio,
a woman with a voice like cucumber hand soap will tell me
about places I have not been yet and about
people I have not met yet and about
the intimacy of swallowing.
Between my side view mirrors, I will be brittle and low
like the empty gray sunflower heads in autumn mourning next to
the corn and
the soybeans and
the exercise equipment where the old orchard artefacts used to rust,
where there are Reeboks for Redlove, ellipticals for Empire,
and soccer fields for Scarlet Surprise—
chaos at every other angle.
abigail swoboda is a queer, nonbinary poet based in Philadelphia, PA, where they live with a couple roommates and at least a few ghosts. You can find them on their website abigailswoboda.com or on Twitter @orbigail or Instagram @honeymoonbeam.


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