The Frigid Fragrance of Moonlight: A Poem of Parting and Urban Ruin

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town

— Thomas Hardy, “The Voice.”

…the frigid fragrance of moonlight
lingering on her bare, steely breasts
that I dare not kiss
with lidless lips again…

Concrete whispers
in dead silence,
sentencing us to— Goodbye

a hand waving from afar and
no tears
in her eyes.

The vast echo of Crumb’s Black Angels
streaming from a boombox,
over the rain puddles
in a deserted parking lot,

long after the rain had stopped
in a city of abandoned storefronts,

uprooted trees and fallen power lines,
beyond packs of dogs

roaming around a lonely station
where she waited
for the last train.

That was the last I saw of her.