"Moon Phasery"

Lisa Richter

Lisa Richter is the author of two books of poetry, Closer to Where We Began (Tightrope Books, 2017) and Nautilus and Bone (Frontenac House, 2020), winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals in Canada and the US. She lives in Toronto.

“‘What on earth can be said about the moon?’ asks Mary Ruefle, in her essay “Poetry and the Moon’ (from Madness, Rack and Honey). ‘La luna! La bella luna!’ cries Cher’s octogenarian Italian grandfather in Moonstruck, one of my all-time favourite movies. The moon exerts its relentless pull over us as it does the tides. Can any lyric poem ever truly escape its influence? ‘Moon Phasery’ emerged in response to images of the moon in visual art over the centuries from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website, whose catalog provided the source text of the quotes in each section.”

i. Moon Jar, 2nd half of the 18th c., Korea

“a distinctive type of porcelain from the late Joseon period . . . made from joining two hemispherical halves”

I join my father even though
he is dead and I am not—

someone hollows out my chest
scrapes clean the calcified
residue for years to heart clinging

someone joins me
to the smooth curvature
that is my father’s spatial memory

our halves make a disjointed
whole despite the hairline
gaps between us

unlike the perfect ivory
sphere that is the surface
of a moon jar

ii. Moon Flask with Crane and Fish Motifs, 1870

“design attributed to Christopher Dresser”

Bright morning sky, you do away
with what’s left of the moon
creamy scraps of it still on display
I question your taste level

you carry off marble ruins
leave me with miraculous
birds, legs like silk ladder rungs stretching
taut over a fortress of breath

I have no answer to your divine
inquiries only a canvas
of bloodroot and lemon-peel
a few words sewn into the lining
of my skin

iii. Apollo’s Muse: Moon in the Age of Photography exhibition, July 3 – September 22, 2019

“. . . visual representations of the moon from the dawn of photography through the present”

A “nite-lite”
a broken torch
a pick-axe
a rocket lodged
in the man
in the moon’s
eye socket
a game
that has no
sound

did I say game
I meant
a name

iv. Two Men Contemplating the Moon, Caspar David Friedrich, c. 1825 – 1830

“. . . they pause on their evening walk through a late autumnal forest to contemplate the sinking moon and Venus, the evening star”

On the hilltop, two merchants
conferred, assessed their givens—
vast stores of malt liquor
ornately carved walnut chairs
secured on a trip to Gdansk

I remember that evening well
how I emerged that night
a waxing crescent: my dark velvet
robe peeking open

I remember their attempts to name
the parts of the sunset

frog’s Adam’s apple, said one
the sun at the moment before it seeps
through horizon’s cloth

bee’s blanket, said the other
the sun, five minutes after it drips
honey perfumed with musk

washer-woman’s nipple, said the first
the moon itself
(here, I blushed)

haloed in rose-yolk
aureole of naked pear