The Aeromancer divines the future by reading
sky signs, clouds, bird flights, lightning
My mother set a tumbler of gold
Jack Daniels beside Pall Mall cigarettes,
dark red packet like a compact
between bricks, smoke and her.
I peered around the door.
One quart of smoke curled up,
the color of milk, whites
of eyes and violets. It was not moon-
lumens’ beauty. She was ace
at pretending she wasn’t
killing herself or anyone else.
She stung my eyes
through the door jamb.
The smoke was lead-pencil gray
when the stub went out. I was
unwritten, a silence,
and the smoke an exaltation
into the yellow light-bulb light.
My eyes remain violet
but my bones are ivory’s color,
old parchment’s, smoke residue
on white curtains. So were hers.
Last night I dreamed I wore
my flower-print blouse, Mother,
violets and green leaves on a black
ground, because, the dream’s
soto voce said, those were dolor’s
colors. And the green?
That was to pretend
you didn’t mean to die.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 5.
Mary B. Moore’s newest poetry collection Amanda Chimera, winner of the Arthur Smith prize, comes out in 2025 from Madville Publishing. Her poetry books include Dear If, Orison Books 2022; Flicker, Dogfish Head Prize, 2016; The Book Of Snow, Cleveland State U Poetry Center, 1997; and the prize-winning chapbooks Amanda and the Man Soul and Eating the Light. Poems are forthcoming in POETRY, Artemis, Poetica Viva, and appear lately in Catamaran, South Dakota Review, Birmingham Poetry Review (BPR), NELLE, Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Georgia Review, and more. Besides her book awards, she has won poetry prizes from BPR, NELLE, Terrain and Nimrod.
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