Lisa Marguerite Mora conducts workshops and offers literary services. Publications include Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Rattle, Literary Mama, Public Poetry Series, California Quarterly, Cultural Weekly, Rebelle Society, Serving House Journal, a Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Prize, First Place winner Micro Fiction for Dandelion Press. Lisa was a semi-finalist for The Tom Howard/ Margaret Reid Poetry Prize 2020. Her first novel caught the attention of top agents. Her prose and poetry have been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize.

All the Things the Moon Can Do

Nothing can be laid to rest until we see its wholeness.
Should we ever be done with the moon

it would be all the phases and the dark side, eclipses — lunar and solar.
All the things the moon can do

all the things it means to us. How we once sought to reach
it in a tiny rocket. Now there is even doubt about that.

We have placed upon this orb all our dreams and machinations, and fears. Should we ever
lay the moon to rest

it must be in complete awareness of all it was and its potential. Otherwise, we ourselves will carry
that dark side we shunned

our unspoken terror, or regret illuminated by a brief bright wafer’s edge;
impossibility of communion. That yearning.

No, if we release the moon the wrong way, we ourselves
will become its cold uninhabitable rocky terrain. Sans imagination

or beauty, as a white rock circling useless in an airless galaxy
until we find another source of illumination

or until we find such hope in ourselves.

Rescue Me—Lisa Marguerite Mora

I.
First the smoke, brown wreathes ghost
along the ceiling. A November night. No sirens.
Crackle of rain. Crackle of flame, smoke and smoke
and smoke in my lungs, dense
hot floorboards, hot panic back and forth I run
back and forth on the third floor then out
through the hallway and up the stairs toward

the square of light
to the roof I climb
and the cold wet stars.

Long diamond needles of water fall
orange urgent flames lick hard past
blown out windows, our windows
lapping the air, lapping my air
but now there’s enough to share.

Do we have to jump? Or will we be rescued?
Me and fire, we breathe the indigo night.
Me and fire forever.

II.

Heaving the basket up from its vat of crackling
oil, my arm slips against the fry of heat, of burn. Seared
and sizzled in a public venue, wearing a uniform. I don’t think
I cried out. I choked. Kept working. Or did I run
cold water on this brand new pain, chorus
of a million soprano nerve cells, concentrated square
of screaming flesh song.

Maybe the floor manager took me back to the utility sink
to place ice. Dull knife of embarrassment, duck and hide.
Was I rescued? I can’t remember.
No such thing as accidents.

III.

Your gaze a long skydive past this Microsoft age fraught
with angst and coffee bean. Dark wet cobblestones of memory
paved in amber, thick viscous longing. Past fire, past smoke.
Rescue me. This is no accident. I slide into a borderless gravity.
I never catch my breath.