Poetry: The night I watched Moonlight for the first time, I thought about how both the Earth & by Michael Pagan
Michael Pagan’s beautiful ekphrasis reminds us what is so compelling about the film—the tender exploration of love and self, the bodies holding bodies, the water. Are you water enough?
The night I watched Moonlight for the first time, I thought about how both the Earth &
silent boys stay silent
because every time they speak
they feel
like they’re breathing in the unpurified
air impoverished with secrets.
But what if the oceans didn’t
exist anymore?
Would Chiron have finally spoken?
His head full of miracles?
Would Juan ever hold him?
Let him rest
that small head of his inside his hand
eyes like luminous windows.
The water draped around him
like a cape.
In a world where hands often lead
to our humiliations
would he still make that promise to
never let him go?
///
Would he still see hands
as homes? Bodies as
sign language?
Would he think:
Take me home?
Please.
Would he have still fallen
in love?
Watched the moon turn
black-sapphire-blue?
When the night is full
of the false promises that
splinter out of its open wound
because in this kind of light
scars appear deeper
than usual?
Would he have cried
(relieved)? & Would he have said
he cried then cried because
he said he did?
Then turn
into drops & roll right into
the water?
But what if there were no water
to begin with? Just a landscape
of violence?
In a world filled with the predictable
architecture of violence, hope
can be an exhilarating shape.
An improvisation. A new theory
on survival because aren’t we only
as alive as our ideas?
///
Would Kevin still reach out
to him (his hands an index
of openings & closings)
the way the blue Earth
always had when it said:
You’re my only. I’m your only?
Sounding the way a mother sounds
when they’re gasping for breath?
Or would Chiron (like most
of us who fear admitting to ourselves:
There’s nothing wrong with me)
offer only our backs to it
because we refuse to allow
it to be the only living thing
that touches us?
Or if he did reach out, would he
have let go or would he respond:
Yes, love?
Reduce the space in-between
them
until there was no air
for him to breathe that he
wasn’t breathing too.
No atmosphere to nudge through.
Smell his cologne then smell
like his cologne.
Now, arms & legs
& hands around torsos & eyes &
ears & mouths & breathing
is a face & hands are homes.
Now, disobeying the fear
away piece by piece
from their bones
now moaning like seeds
growing out of concrete
gardens.
Would they have grown? He
& Kevin planted together
into trees? Or would they
have just died like so many
before them?
Made into sculptures
out of the dry, lifeless Earth
because Man isn’t water
enough.
Only bones & the souls
of other dead ghosts.
Michael Pagan
Born and raised in Miami, FL, Michael J Pagán spent four years (1999-2003) in the United States Navy before (hastily) running back to college during the spring of 2004. He currently resides in Lake Worth, FL, where he continues to work on writing. He is a is a co-founder of 100 Miles & Running – A Collective & also maintains a blog of all his published work: The Elevator Room Company. A graduate of Florida Atlantic University's Creative Writing M.F.A. program, his poetry, fiction, non-fiction and drama have appeared or is forthcoming in Apogee Journal, The Chattahoochee Review, Hunger Mountain, The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, Spork Press, Coachella Review, BlazeVOX, Menacing Hedge, Revolver, Hobart, Mad Hatters’ Review, Juked, The California Journal of Poetics, Rock and Sling, Spiral Orb and Saw Palm among others.
