Now Be a Good One: Meredith Mitchell

April 4, 2020 Kate Belew with Meredith Mitchell (Maine)

The thing about celestial bodies is

they are often mistaken for thumbprints

into the ink pad of the universe’s legal system

where humanness is criminal, laughable

pointed at in the lineup, but unrecognized.

We will swill the milk of our galaxy, drunk on confusion

and hitching ourselves to that next star

waiting for the cosmos to undress us

button by button, the skirt of saturn’s ring

hang on, hang on, a glistening moon

dangles out of your ear like an earring.

Be soft into the sky, the night is wooing

whispering a line of a poem in your ear, raining a glass.

Here’s to us, love, now be a good one, collapse inward.