Moonshadows
 
Prairie half-moon gazes;
Coyotes spread the star-sky
As thin as unfed flesh.
Their silken screams rise.

I move too close:
The knotted desert rocks
Snap, crumble underfoot.
Quiet night, where are you?

My algid nightmare thrives:
I am the barren Jew,
The wailful wanderer
Raped in a dry land.

My eyes widen to catch
Its silhouette.  Crest light
Teases these lids to sleep—
Only to see the darker half.
 

Copyright 1972, copyright renewed 1998,  by Alyssa A. Lappen

 Alyssa A. Lappen is a journalist, and has written and edited for magazines such as Working Woman, Corporate Finance, and Forbes.  She is now Senior Editor at Institutional Investor.  She won a poetry prize from Harvard in 1971 and has published several poems this year.

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