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This poem is taken from PN Review 203, Volume 38 Number 3, January - February 2012.

The Man in the Moone Zoë Skoulding
it's always night before the words and in this
silence something startles out of nowhere
crashes into earth with no-one to look back

or say what a body was before and what has
changed in it as fingernails crescent into moons
to shadow month by turning month

or what is the name of this silence all steely
reflection still waning where the moon
slips away under cover of detectable traces

what it looks like from here is all I can tell you
now it's all push and pull all yes no maybe
all credit and loss all of it passing through

the others I am speaking I am walking I am
eating I am sleeping I am writing only I
could have written this only you will read it


*


the future was invented with its tense
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