Eva Moe

Tag: poetry

  • Don’t Be Shy, Mr. President!

    The President loved his first date with her.
    The explosive feel,
    how her tongue looked. How it rained afterwards
    Magical, black rain.
    Everyone’s bloated dance in the river that day.

    And the second
    It was like the whole world ended
    when they kissed the second time.
    The kind of kiss that burns your throat
    and makes you want to talk to gods.
    You do, on days like this.

    He needs it bigger than before, the third
    a human shadow burned in stone
    like no one’s ever seen before
    like no one’s ever heard, you know
    this time he’ll keep his word.

    He’s picking out our lipstick now
    and picking up the phone.
    He wants to make his money now
    He wants to press the button now.
    He wants to lick our blood off now
    He wants to kiss the world.

    After the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, black rain fell and bodies appeared in the Ota River. Those who survived the blast had terrible symptoms (how her tongue looked) and died hours, days, weeks later suffering constantly.

    This photograph depicts the steps outside a bank. It is called Human Shadow Etched in Stone. More artwork and depictions can be found in A People’s Record of Hiroshima.

    This is what President Truman did, and what President Trump has the authority to do. So when he threatens to bomb an entire civilization “back to the stone ages” this is what he means. Corpses in the rivers, humans evaporated, melted flesh. This is what he’s excited to inflict.

    Hiroshima is now a city dedicated to peace. In monuments around Peace Memorial Park, there are thousands of paper cranes all carrying the wish for world peace. And in 1964, professor Kenzo Tange designed a sculpture called Flame of Peace. It was lit on August 1, 1964 and will “keep burning until the day nuclear weapons disappear from the earth.” I hope that day comes before the President’s third date.

    With love,
    Eva Moe

  • Lightening in the Middle of the Day [Poetry Zine]

    Hello! I recently went to my local library’s zine fest & had a great time. There were so many booths and wonderful artists that inspired me to make my own zine! If you’re familiar with my site, you’ve probably seen a lot of the zine’s content, but I figured hey – let’s put a lil somethin together.

    lightening in the middle of the dayDownload

  • Drum Machine

    In this room, I do start to feel violent
    in a directionless way
    like there’s no bucket to throw up in 
    so you puke in your hands or swallow.
    There’s only yourself to damage.
    In this room,
    nobody looks me in the eye.
    I must not be here.
    If I am not here,
    then I must be a machine
    almost perfect,
    made perfecter in silence.
    Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum.
    Ergo drum.
    So, I am
    to the carpet, to the men
    as machine as the Wurlitzer organ.
    What a funny sound she makes.
    Is my voice truly so sour in your bucket ears
    that there is nothing good to hear in me?
    I doubt, therefore I drum.

  • lightening in the middle of the day

    the string of fate pulls you forward forward
    forward to the next song forward to the skill tree, branches
    torn off like arms
    lie at your feet
    and the air is blue tinted, cool and smells of steel.
    A student who knows all the rules
    and pivots.
    There will be a ceremony in the woods
    there will be a test later
    there will be a smarter person
    somebody else, their turn for it
    there’s a lot more than one place you can go
    and you pivot.

  • The Mail Came

    It’s open on my couch.
    I wonder
    if I really must do the hardest things to be worthy
    of myself
    of others
    do I really need to be impressive with Japanese
    do I really need to show my work – how much I studied
    how long it took me to write an essay how many times I
    didn’t cry
    wanted to
    how tough I really am how little I use the flee response
    I freeze I fawn I fight fight fight.
    I missed the deadline.
    Favorite pastime.
    There should be some in-between, no? Can I get a little in-between?
    Can’t I put my feet up and be as worthy of the room as the furniture?
    The bouquet is not too dry to hang on the wall.
    That open letter.
    They took away my health insurance again.

  • Faith Says

    Faith says you woke up somewhere
    with an open world and directions
    Found a horse 
    with the nose of a bloodhound.
    He wants to head West 
    towards the cold
    but you don’t let him yet.

    You’re a cowboy in a canyon 
    And when the red dust frosts you like a cake 
    You come back this way. 
    Put your big ears down
    And your heavy mallet
    The piano will miss you when it lands.

    You unbolted those wooden arms of hers and now
    She lies flat on the floor, hingeless.
    She sings through the tile 
    all the way down.
    She has the water and the music 
    and the snow you gathered rolling over here.

  • 7/21/25 streams of consciousness

    There were poems I meant to write this week and sentences too afraid to call me back and so I folded them into a sock and put em in a drawer with the rest of the clean laundry.

    Apartment I
    As put away as it can be before you come over with your batteries and open lung. We are recording the river or the birds and will watch as we both guess the meaning of bulrush and if it’s as hard to pass through as the tongue makes it sound. We will watch for the sound, watch for the bird wings and ask if they’ve seen this in their ancestry before – to know something in their baths if they saw what it means to be stuck on land making our feet sick first.

    I put the sweater back, bright green I fold it the way a bird folds a puddle. I can only trace your reflection in the water and pretend I am the water too. You have a bow with no need for arrows, you let them all loose. The four of them italicized in mud. Clean.

    Apartment II
    It’s taking everybody’s toothpicks to keep me standing. Tetherball on a plate, dinner plate next to the coffee and my cold feet up on the window, I’m sliding towards the city. Wished for a birthday further away – it is a surge of water my nose isn’t ready for in the summer with the hose and artificial rainbows and wet grass stuck to ankles and the old tear in my leg tugged taught as a bowstring you aren’t supposed to pull back without an arrow. I am a habit bad for its mechanism.

    There is a day of the week with time in it somewhere, hidden inventory hidden treasure hidden day entirely fabled – a rider with a cloak and satin brown horse could come do these dishes and hunt for the nuts I buried last winter. You could come find the red paint and leather string and yellow yarn and tell me what to keep. If there was only someone as present as next week who could tell me what to keep.

  • It’s a Mary Oliver Morning

    I’ve been reading Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver in the mornings before leaving for work. Mary Oliver often wrote about loving the mornings, and it feels like an homage to read her work before the day settles into itself.
    I’m also studying conclusions, as it’s been quite a struggle in my own poetry. Her poems end in such a way that they mean even more than what you thought at the beginning. That to me is the making of a good poem anyway, but her language is so layered throughout. Today I came to “That Little Beast” and thought it was an Ars Poetica about how life is funny like a dog…until the last stanza. Ah the gentle sweetness of this poem! Go off, Mary!

    <3 <3 <3

  • new band

    Music goes from one of you
    to the other
    the same way a lake will
    skip the stone
    back to you, place it gently
    in your hands.

    A chorus cloud parts.
    Open, yellowing sky.
    You are both
    fish without Poseidon
    and gods with
    one church.

  • cassette tape

    I was taught I run in circles
    of friends with the same taste.

    I was taught when I move,
    you move too. That my voice

    is a ribbon in the middle of
    your ribs. That your voice layers

    over mine like a hand.
    Over time, I will teach you

    how to return yourself
    to the starting position

    taught and ready, before
    the song you love forgets you.