[ALANA GREENE]

What I Find the Day of the Funeral

It looks like the Moon, but it isn’t.
Everything looks like the Moon, though,
doesn’t it? The offensive pool ball, screaming
across the billiards table. The paper coaster
peeking through the inch of glass
protecting the empty pint from the filthy bar.
The mass that gleamed snowy
against the black of the X-ray.
The meanest ex’s sleeping eye, void
of tetchy capillaries during a midnight
inspection, checking they’re still breathing.
And for what? Their soul’s a blank disc too:
another Moon Thing.
It’s hard to believe time
could whittle a perfect white circle
from a sand dollar, or that God could grant
anything so tenuous existence at all,
but here it is: a sea-button sitting
slight in my wet palm, a dead thing
persevering.

[about]

Alana Greene is an American writer living in London, where she is currently pursuing her MA in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in cool rock repository, The Minison Zine, and HELL IS REAL: A Midwest Gothic Anthology.