Dane Hamann

From Issue 4

Moonlight by Edvard Munch

Thee outbursts of your mind are
considered automatic & stylized

open spaces. Your hand just glides,
seeing the way night takes a lungful.

Consider this sky & shoreline,
a thin white channel of bone

dripping like wax. A cloistered
midsummer awash in a cold palette.

Maybe it’s all cloud to you, or sunset
triggered by a pushbutton moon.

It’s form unanchored. A confrontation
coming into view from the forest’s edge.

You try to plump up the scene. Boughs,
impossibly swollen, starving toothpick trees.

Your best choice was an island. A shadow
of bedrock brushed with weightless gray.

You find the fullness of such a night
too easy, so you daub it out of habit

while I choke on the heat of pre-dinner
drinks, my heart caroming inside

a perfectly sized shot glass. Pour me one
more, painter, anchor me to this shore.