moonheart
afterbirth
i’m eighty-three today,
it feels so good
in this soft body, my arms now
covered in a plush of chestnut
feathers, feathers,
can you believe!
the things they don’t tell you
about childbirth, about losing
your mother and father, about this secret
sprout of plume you get,
my bones been bird-tiny too a while now
so you know i fly in the evenings,
titty-bottoms ppppppevery bit
of wind they missed in their earthbound
daytime, some days i am a sparrow and some
a falcon, some days i sp all afternoon touched
down in a bush with one hundred loves
and wewwwwwwwthat is my only purpose, to sing
alongside my kin, i haven’t looked myself in the face
in half a century and denied her, i can remember
when i was young and thought i was old
and knew only this, but no, it’s been a festival
of love here, all baby elephants flop-sloshing
the kiddie pool of my heart empty, and
when it’s empty it’s not empty but become
the thirsty earth beneath it,
and the meadow surrounding my heart rejoices
in this big gulp, drooling a bit of libation
back to me in a lazy river of mud that slicks my toes
melted chocolate-covered,
i am an eighty-three-year-old snack
and i am my favorite
snack, i am so sweet and
i am not embarrassed,
i do not question the bees
that buzz around my head a crown
and travel now to my chocolate flower toes
(earlier my granddaughter painted them
to match this splash-fed meadow,
this meadow an ode of goldenrod,
you know those flowers that are many
yellow trumpets birthing each other aplume
into a brass band? you know, the trumpet’s oldest ancestor?
each day i walk a meadow thick with them and their old music,
that choir of trumpets tucking a low wail
beneath whatever song the birds are making above them,
i have seen them music the bees into a horny frenzy,
nectar-high or sap-drunk or both, bliss-dizzy
in this party of sound) do you know i have laid in this
garden for days, hummingbird-high off my wings on
its nectar, chestbare, (it’s so hot now), soaking, shameless,
i don’t give a fuck, each day i wake up
beside a peach, a whole oak tree, a cloud,
another meadow, yes michael
is still here with me in his same body, gone full-feathered too,
and yes, we still do, our flock of feathers
oft mistaken for the bees,
we down their honey daily after all,
and some nights i am an owl when i want to hear
the music of the mushrooms nudging their heads
above ground overnight, or the music of
the moment the mugwort sweats forth
a chest of dewy gems, or the song of
my great-grandbabies’ lashes sweeping moonlit
cheeks as their eyes flit around their heads,
watching a beautiful dream flicker on the big screen
of a long sleep, i can still slow-gallop after their brownbird legs
for a bit when they giggle away from me in a game of chase
or after some silly something involving a caterpillar
in my silver pigtails, they know nothing of the police
or the prisons or the wars before besides the odd buddy
cop or war crap the neighbors may project against the clouds
at night, and i will show them soon enough the shapes and patterns,
the echo and the break, the mud, the blood, the kin, the stories,
the afterbirth, and they will be sure of the sound
when the echo comes back, threatening,
but for now they are petting the caterpillars,
and know nothing of water for sale
or air for sale or land for sale or a private river
or safety for sale or a roof over their heads for sale
or a wood they can’t wander, they know
nothing of an apple tree unfit for public picking,
and when i tell them the stories of what it was like,
they ask me why, and how, and
who would ever, they can’t
imagine, what more could we need,
what more could we possibly need?
moonheart, aka kim mayo, is a neuroqueer writer, vocalist, composer, artist & filmmaker from many places. They’ve published poems in Pigeon Pages, lHooligan Magazine, & on their YouTube channel, where they sometimes set their poems to stop-motion videos. They are the recipient of a full fellowship as the teaching assistant for 2021’s In Surreal Life, facilitated by Shira Erlichman, &, recently completed Catapult’s 12-Month Poetry Generator Workshop with Angel Nafis, where they were supported in completing their first full-length collection of poems. they are currently dreaming, making, & tweeting too much from tongva land, aka los angeles. you can find them doing that @moonhearttt.