“The Moon Is a Painted Stone,” by James Capozzi (forthcoming in issue 22)

The Muse is a room you find beneath the cork trees

near the abbey's door, with aromas of manure

yarrow, and oranges.  The study of the Muse requires

quietude, so you place the barrel in your ear

           

and blast your way into the room, are implicit in its angles

its magnificent triptych depicting a saint, pursued and named

by her sin.  Not when or why, but here—the world's road.

A throng like leather puppets makes its evil

           

rounds on it, below the cliffs, among the rocks.  Their faces are

a soggy blur.  Your face is dark and now you are

deaf with stone, the painted air

           

so she sails into the ocellated oaks and sees that

your obsequity is nothing like humility.

That the whole is greater than the part.