The following is a poetry excerpt from issue 33.1 (Spring 2009) of the cream city review. It appears on pages 150-1.

PISTOLERA RECOLLECTIONS
Luke Daly

After seeing a photo of me painting
a house I’ve never seen robin’s egg blue,

I aim to learn how memories persist or
perish so I ask the moon.

White moon utters its private,
dead-thing language and hangs

in blinking, beeping star fields
from a crumbling ribcage and harpsichord veins.

I’m planted in waiting for a return transmission.

Ten million lightyears away in the Sombrero Galaxy
a lunar translation has bloomed

but the translator speaks only in flowers
and the flowers refuse to speak—

There’s the bucket of yellow photos
of my aunts and of my cowboy boots

and of my aunts in yellow cowboy boots.

They’re drinking alligator wine.
They’re honking like men at football matches.

Shall I trust these photos too? I can almost
pluck each one; they float here in the waiting

room. But like a stone on my tongue
I cannot photosynthesize by toothlight.

I am part of this blind chromatic ritual
of light me up with beet dye,

light my chest for everyone to see.