Under the Etcetera of Moonlight, and: On Reunion

Under the Etcetera of Moonlight, and: On Reunion Kayleb Rae Candrilli (bio) Under the Etcetera of Moonlight With my glasses left on the nightstandthe moon is always full and in harvest. Everything beyondmy reach is orbing, and gestural in form. Through the windowthe moonlight cuts my chest to pieces and, this time, it isn't so violent.There are no scalpels or scrubs to be found, only the soundof my shortest hairs growing longer and my partner's mostrestful dreams. You know, a girl beneath the moon was oncethe tinder for all of Troy. I feel like this, sometimes—likean imagined girl hidden in the haunches of a Trojan horse,only ever meant as allegory, meant as metaphor for the deceptive natureof beauty beyond words. End Page 8 On Reunion Father, how should we meetif we are ever to meet again? I imagine it in the parking lotof a strip mall, where massage parlors and RadioShacks oncelived in cold and campy harmony. I imagine you will bring a gunto our knife fight, as you tended to do in the 90s and 2000s. Father,are you still as sick as you once claimed to be? Or have the afflictionswithered away, like our long abandoned house plants? Your mother saysthe badness has dried with age, as hers did. Your hands are around lessthroats than ever. There are no landline cords to wrap necks with, in this dayand age, anyways. So much time passes so quickly. Decades as fastas tipped rain sticks. Decades flowed away like waterbeds slashed andflooding the second-floor bedroom. I remember the rainstorm of 2004,how sinkholes opened in the roads and how you could only reach meby walkie talkie—such spotty signal End Page 9 over all those downed trees. I rememberthe water rushing, the green leaves battered until bruised and backwards.I remember everything except your face. That's how I preferyou—hues mixed until nothing in particular. End Page 10 Kayleb Rae Candrilli Kayleb Rae Candrilli is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a PEW fellowship, and of a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. They are the author of Water I Won't Touch (Copper Canyon, 2021), All the Gay Saints (Saturnalia Books, 2020), and What Runs Over (YesYes Books, 2017). They live in Philadelphia with their partner. Copyright © 2024 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents