[No strawberry moon]
No strawberry moon for me, tonight. No strawberry moon. This small house creaks when I walk and open it. I have to weigh it, to goddess or not tonight. Goddess or godless. God is in my sleeping children’s presence tonight. I use words like god when I haven’t seen the strawberry moon, less when I haven’t been so generous. It’s not about gender—ess or less—but heft of the weight. Inside me like a baby. When people procreate. Romance a dashing thing. The harvest upon us. Will we feast or collapse in exhaustion tonight which is every?
Copyright © 2016 by Emmy Pérez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 14, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I get giddy with each summer solstice, enjoy extraordinary and culturally insightful moon phases, and love the outdoors, though in recent years, many of my late nights are dedicated to helping my small children go to sleep and stay asleep, without tears or fears. Needless to say, this past June 20, I didn’t step outside to see the full strawberry moon coinciding with the summer solstice, even though I wanted to and knew that the last rare appearance apparently occurred in 1967, the ‘Summer of Love,’ before I was born. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll get to see this rare moon-on-the-solstice when it next arrives in forty-six or so years.”
—Emmy Pérez
Emmy Pérez
Emmy Pérez is the author of With the River on Our Face (University of Arizona Press, 2016). She co-founded the Poets Against Walls collective in 2017 and is Professor of Creative Writing and Associate Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley. In 2019, she was named the poet laureate of Texas.