Fog moon, mud moon,
moons of flowers and heat—
this is the friction
of space on space,
the endless exchange of
things through which swarm
the insects of confusion,
as in a changer’s dream,
her ear a sleeping porch.
And these are clinging moons.
These are moons that flail
and clutch, always crying
out for the safety of names.
Easy is a lie, slippery
a fact. Yellow is
the color of death.
And just as moons will ebb,
the changer will awaken to sun
on her porch. She will note
how black is the color
of sleep, and so
of bliss, how moons
of blood and moons of fruit
come from blue and green,
how moons of blood
and moons of fruit
merge with moons of filth,
ends which are not ends,
but sweetness . . .

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D. Foy is the author of the novels Made to Break, Patricide, and Absolutely Golden (which in 2018 was also published in France). His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Guernica, Literary Hub, Salon, The Millions, Hazlitt, Electric Literature, BOMB, and the Georgia Review, among others, and have been included in the books Laundromat, A Moment’s Notice, and Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial.

“The Vermin and the Stars” first appeared in TLR: The Lives of the Saints (Fall 2011).