The moon is sorrow on silver.
In the library of our killings
the bones are mixed up.
Undaunted by history, students
sit on archival boxes eating
burnt toast with organic tomato jam.
The burettes are acid-clean and
ending isn’t in the vocab.
Tethered to a rail out the back
I wait his coming, my
striped hunter.

The moon is blood over Vesuvius.
Men watch from the battlements
as I’m marched to a murky
causeway, the women
are in hiding. He swishes
through the night
flaunting his lithe frame
in a lazy mid-air flick, lands soft
on his paws and waits
for his ears to be scratched,
tiger eyes gleaming.

It’s new moon at the Sunderbans.
The city-boat’s been drifting
for days on the tide, now
in now out, a mausoleum
reeking burnt metal
dead humans and godly
blood. We pounce
on puckish estuarine
shadows, my sisters and I
to pass the hours,
mother’s late.

2013