suzanne o’connell
Lunar Love
Mother warned me about the bad girls,
the ones with teased hair
and cigarettes rolled in their sleeves.
Like them,
the moon has a bad reputation.
Billy Collins warned me never
to write about the moon or grandfathers.
But I love an underdog.
And tonight,
there’s a vanilla-custard moon
stabbing me with light,
and I need medical attention.
I love the moon
like I love melted cheese.
The moon is shameless
like those girls,
oozing all over the place.
Hey, moon,
let’s sit down together
on my stoop
and talk about sandwiches.
Suzanne O’Connell’s recently published work can be found in Cantos, Drunk Monkeys, Doubly Mad, El Portal Literary Journal, Flights, Ignatian Literary Magazine, Medicine and Meaning, Midwest Quarterly, Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, The Opiate, Paterson Literary Review, Perceptions Magazine, Pine Hills Review, Rue Scribe, Silver Birch Press, Sublunary Review, Tulsa Review, Visitant Lit, Wrath-Bearing Tree, and others. She was awarded second place in the 2019 Poetry Super Highway poetry contest. O’Connell was also nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and received Honorable Mention in the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, 2019. Her two poetry collections, A Prayer For Torn Stockings and What Luck, were published by Garden Oak Press.