i. First Quarter
You take the incomplete necklace and wear it every day, and so does she.
What’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine.
Fair.
ii. Waxing Crescent
A moth clings to the ceiling. Only one side is visible, but the other is the same.
French manicure: you examine the thumb for flaws and find none.
The night is sweet and overripe. Someone has pressed their nail in it.
iii. New
As in, This is new, said in a tone that makes it clear the speaker doesn’t like the object.
Something essential is gone.
Cinders in the fireplace from a log which refused at first to flame.
The inside of eyelids.
A child says carelessly, or, worse, in a heartbroken tone, I dropped it.
iv. Waning Crescent
The cecropia fluttered its wings and offski’d.
Nail clippings.
Someone dogeared the page of the book too firmly. Imprint, crimped.
v. Third Quarter
Sometimes it’s a divided heart, sometimes a broken coin. A torn letter.
What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours.
Fair.
vi. Waning Gibbous
Dog bowl on the slanted floor.
The siren moving into the distance.
The aching feet, the nearby chair.
vii. Full
The coin before it’s dropped into the slot.
The train has hit another deer.
The frog produces the golden ball, your stomach drops away, endless, dark.
The magician has palmed the quarter. He pulls it from your ear. Nobody is surprised.
What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.
viii. Waxing Gibbous
It’s not just the leaves, the slant of branch in the white lilac bush.
Press here to reboot.
Enough is as good as a feast.
Sarah Ann Winn’s poems, prose, and hybrid works have appeared or are upcoming in Five Points, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Massachusetts Review, Passages North, and Quarterly West, among others. Her chapbooks include Field Guide to Alma Avenue and Frew Drive (Essay Press, 2016), Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, Fallen into the Bay (Porkbelly Press, 2016) and Portage (Sundress Publications, 2015). Her first book, Alma Almanac, won the 2016 Barrow Street Book Prize, and will be published by Barrow Street Press in 2017. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from George Mason University and a Master of Library Science from Catholic University of America.