Mary Moore The twenty lanterns and forty batteries you bought me
The twenty lanterns and forty batteries you bought me
when the power went out will make us
so light on our feet so unfraught
that even the little angles of darkness
in corners will fly off like pairs of cherub wings
and we'll drink Ling Ling to stay high
and for its color like sunlight and tie
encyclopedias to our feet with clothesline
to hold us down. Never mind
what the stage machinery
must do to be heard above the din
so many vibrating atoms of air
make rubbing against each other like us,
the friction the fiction lighting us up.