Katherine Larson

For Max Rojas Once a month when the moon loses everything, Don Max takes a chair to the edge of the sea. Black sand beach & green-backed heron. The moon casts off her milkglass earrings. I am nothing, she says, but black & white. I keep losing my face. Don Max feels for his pipe in his pocket. Takes it, knocks it against his palm. I am old! She cries. I get gooseflesh in the dark. Don Max is looking for his tobacco. Don Max has found a match. You don’t know how hard it is to come back from nothing. Don Max smiles & lights up. I keep making the same mistakes, she says. I think you should leave me, she says. Through smoke, she watches Don Max fold a strip of seaweed into a grasshopper. Leave me for your own good! She demands. Don Max has set the grasshopper in the sand. Besides, I am too beautiful. She speaks it as though it makes her sad. I’ll find other lovers. I will forget you.

I Today I dissected a squid, the late acacia tossing its pollen across the black of the lab bench. In a few months the maples will be bleeding. That was the thing: there was no blood only textures of gills creased like satin, suction cups as planets in rows. Be careful not to cut your finger