Day 24, Poet 24: Janet Norman Knox

Photo by Jim Fagiolo

Lunar Longing: Do Moons Have Lips?

First word? Moon. 
We’re not sure if it is the m 
of mama or divine bovine hum, 
this naming of satellites to spin 
a planet, outer spacey, cosmo naughty, 
having mastered the o-ring and its fallacies, 
its aborted missions witching fluids 
can tap moon rocks in her pockets. 

Women thirst a milky blue. 
Dowsing the moon is a matter of debate,
iceglint below a dry surface 
in the crater’s shadow, a pocket 
of H2O lodged by a meteor hunk hurled 
across the black vacuum, which sucks 
all manner of moisture into the void, 
her last words—Mulled Moon, Must

Moon, Mute Moon.


Previously published by Fourth River.


Seven-time Pushcart nominee and finalist for the Discovery/The Nation Award, Janet Norman Knox's poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, 5 AM, Crab Creek Review, Rhino, Bellingham Review, Fourth River, Diner, Seattle Review, Adirondack Review, and Diagram. Her play, 9 Gs and the Red Telephone, was featured in Feminist Studies. She received the Ruskin Poetry Prize (Red Hen Press) and the Los Angeles Review nominated her for Best New Poets. Her chapbook, Eastlake Cleaners when Quality & Price Count [a romance], received the Concrete Wolf Editor's Award. http://www.rattle.com/ereviews/knoxeastlake.htm  Janet collaborates with artists Anne Beffel (Jack Straw Foundation and Duwamish Revealed Grants) and Vaughn Bell (4Culture and Duwamish Revealed Grants). She currently has an exhibit at the Jack Straw Foundation Galleries. Her play, Artifact Pattern—Observations on the Behavior of Homo Sapiens in Change, was hosted by the Bainbridge Island Art Museum in 2016. Janet is an entrepreneur and Environmental Geochemist, her company turning 30.