Lunar Fate by Mario Milosevic in Farewell Issue, Journal of Mythic Arts, 2008 — Endicott Studio

Lunar Fate

by Mario Milosevic

I remembered when the moon will fall

quietly tracking across the sky

in its accustomed arc

then one tip of its crescent

snagging on a branch

of a hillside tree

and just like that

the inspiration for poets

and the engine of tides

will have been moored

on the horizon's edge

where it will sway in the breeze

like a great slow balloon

and children will gather round

with hands outstretched

to a clever entrepreneur

who will have secured the right

to cut up the moon into small pieces

and sell them for a dollar each

to the children who will mistake them

for candy at first

then collect and trade

pieces of the moon

like they were baseball cards

until one day all those pieces

will end up

in attics and the backs of closets,

forgotten artifacts of childhood.










About the Author:
Mario Milosevic's fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in F&SF, Asimov's, California Quarterly, Tucumcari Literary Review, Black Warrior Review, Midwest Poetry Review, and many other print and online journals, as well as in the anthology Poets Against the War. He has published three collections of poems to date: Animal Life, Fantasy Life, and Love Life; and a "novel in 99–word episodes": Terrastina and Mazolli. He lives with his wife, writer Kim Antieau, in Washington’s beautiful Columbia River Gorge, where he works as a small town librarian. For more information, please visit his website.

Copyright © 2008 by Mario Milosevic. The poem may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.



Farewell Issue   |   JoMA Poetry Archives