Moon and Twilight by Fernando Trujillo
Image by PN art intern Danielle White, @yourdanidoodles.
Associate poetry editor Andrew Walker on today’s bonus poem: Here, in “Moon and Twilight,” we find desire in four movements, bodies of flesh and water, tender places in which to fall in love. Moment by moment, season by season, Trujillo dips us into the pool of longing, stage-lit by the brilliant moon. Wade a while, dear reader—come the last line, you won’t want to dry off.
Moon and Twilight
1.
Waxing gibbous lunar maria—I swim in
Your shadowy waters
Among saguaro-flecked pre-Incan ruins.
“Hermana del sol”—breath on my neck
Atop this hill, a boy behind me
Pointing toward celestial lands.
You, him—abandon.
We return to town over the bridge,
He and I parting forever, you between us
Each night we yearn in your rays.
—Tilcara, Winter/El Paso, Summer
2.
after Li Bai
Vast in wet skies
I wade in to reach you,
Smooth stones underfoot;
Cold rises from calf to chest
But still you’re too far.
Blancor almidonado1 bright,
A cairn in shallow waters collapses—
Were I braver
I’d chase you into the depths.
—Lassen Volcanic Park, Summer
1 from Federico García Lorca’s “Romance de la luna, luna”
3.
Naked,
Limb over limb,
We pause between poems
To taste the sounds our lips and tongues have made.
Your apartment smells of
Eucalyptus, and something I can’t name—
From bed we can see
Storm clouds out the window.
Later when you cum in me
I smell creosote, twilight on the horizon like fire.
—El Paso, Fall
4.
Grass is strange. In the desert, it’s a thing of
parks—unnatural,
But ambrosian, too; decadent—water for softness,
water for color, for green.
August rains have come, bringing coolness, and the
clouds of the sky are the dark blue of the Pacific.
Blue and green, or can I also say verde and azul.
Perhaps, and quizás.
Yes, this fits me,
Unnatural child, green among the sands, but sandy,
too, in their own way. And blue, so blue.
Yes, this fits me.
—
Twilight turns to dark in the park,
bright lights of the courts,
tennis rackets sing.
—El Paso, Summer
Fernando Trujillo (he/they) lives in El Paso, Texas, where they were born and raised. He’s lived a varied life here and there, including a stint in law school in Austin, but now they spend their days working, writing, reading, taking walks, and debating giving graduate school another shot. He can be found on Twitter @FTrujillo915.
