“Blood Moon” by Elizabeth Jacobson
echoes of a hate crime
People are made of paper, love affairs,
anything that tears easily.
A pregnant woman stands under the lunar eclipse,
carves a swirl into a tree,
her baby is born with this same mark on his thigh.
It’s just like the earth to come between the sun and the moon
and cause this kind of mystery.
Point at a rainbow, and it will plummet and slice your finger off.
Use your lips instead, to show others what you are looking at.
Don’t stand on high rocks or they will push you into the sky,
and you will be pressed like a flower in a book.
People are made from rain showers, hatred, smears of spit,
anything that might evaporate instantly.
That night, the moon was a true blood red,
not the pale rust of this moon, this morning.
An entire human body coated red with blood,
except where a path of tears washed through.
Don’t stare at the moon
or it will follow you persistently like a stray cat you have fed.
Don’t hold out your hands when the sun is shining,
or you will burn continually with possibility.
People are made of buckets of sand, sequins of clay, desire,
anything that washes away easily.
Don’t inhale too deeply, the scent of fallen leaves
pasted to the forest floor after a fresh rain,
or you will be repeatedly stepped on.
Don’t count the seeds in a mound of bear scat
or just as many clouds will split open above your head.
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Elizabeth Jacobson Artist Statement:
Elizabeth Jacobson is the author of a chapbook, A Brown Stone (Dancing Girl Press), and a full
length collection, Her Knees Pulled In (Tres Chicas Books). She is the founding director of the
WingSpan Poetry Project which conducts poetry classes at local shelters. WingSpan has received
a Community Partnership award from the Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families and a grant
from the Witter Bynner Foundation. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in many print and
on-line publications, most recently American Poetry Review, Orion Magazine, Hinchas de Poesia
and Plume. She is the recipient of the Mountain West Writers’ Award from Western Humanities
Review, The Jim Sagel Prize for Poetry from Puerto del Sol, a grant from New Mexico Literary
Arts, and an MFA from Columbia University. This fall she will be teaching at the Santa Fe
Community College and at the Ghost Ranch Writing Festival in Abiquiu, New Mexico.
