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[like sky lit moon]

like sky lit moon,   if it didn’t feel so good we wouldn’t eat so much of it:   
            the sugar, the sex. we wouldn’t have
 
built that storefront for condoms & cashews & hands  & legs & lassos 
 
waiting on a credible news source  to confirm reports of the recent extinction
            of the unicorn race.   a week ago it was reported  
 
the last cowboy died out too.   you said you were  shocked & entirely  skeptical at the same time.

as long as there exists the places we are waiting on
            & the places we will not go,
 
i am sure unicorns & cowboys are much alive in the fabric of our DNA.   i whisper into your palm,
            the same palm that reaches & reaches & reaches outward.                
 
you  took the news like one takes  
            a  secret. you thought on it a while.  you buried it in the backyard of your head.  

you watered it, sung to it before bed  & like all things it grew.    

just because we can’t see cowboys & unicorns
            doesn’t mean we  shouldn’t pray
 
to them, you said, quiet,  as to not break the still  black morning’s sloth.    
 
just because we can’t  pray to them, doesn’t mean there lacks room for us to imagine hooves
            against the wooden slats of a saloon, a person riding bare back
 
 
with one-handed confidence leading us
            from temptation to temptation
 
& delivering us to a rotunda  of night sky, you said.
 
you wrote a prayer on a notepad:
            unicorn,   tell us how all was placed on earth.  


you burnt it in a candle.  you watched its ashes  be carried off to somewhere else. everywhere we exist
 
is a building waiting for us to
            step out of,  & because we grow weary of listening for hooves at night,  
 
 
 in the morning, ivory glistens with dew
            & because children stop dreaming in their beds  & later outside of them too, we all must
 
 
face our inevitable extinctions. the new  others will make tapestries of us then. 
            we will not be shown making shapes with arms & legs
 
nor eating pistachios in bed 
 
but alive again, walking upright.  the visitors will say   how happy
            they look, in the tapestry         where we are
 
chained to a pomegranate tree surrounded by a fence,  in a field of eternal celestial bloom  
 
where the flowers know to open for moon, not sun.  
            those coming to visit  our tapestry will think we didn’t know the difference
 
between our serenity & freedom.   I wonder how they tamed them,  
 
            the visitors will say.   I wonder if  they knew
 
they were  the last of  something?   & right now as I think these things   in bed,
            on some porch in somewhere montana  a house lamp dims  
 
& the sky a broken yolk above it.
 
what are you thinking, you say.   no, don’t tell   me, you say, waiting  for me to
            pull you onto my side of the bed
 
& the moonlight will make its attempt to pierce
            through the curtains   while we both wait.
Picture
Ze Gao. From Mirror. Photograph. Courtesy of the artist.  

Keegan Lester is the winner of the 2016 Slope Editions Book Prize, selected by Mary Ruefle, for his collection this shouldn’t be beautiful but it was & it was all i had, so i drew it. He is an American poet splitting time between New York City and Morgantown, West Virginia. His work is published in or forthcoming from the Boston Review, The Atlas Review, Powder Keg, BOAAT Journal, The Journal, Phantom Books, Tinderbox, CutBank, and Sixth Finch, among others, and has been featured on NPR, The New School Writing Blog, and Coldfront Magazine. He is the co-founder and poetry editor for the journal Souvenir Lit. You can follow him on Twitter @keeganmlester, on Instagram @kml2157, or find out more at keeganlester.com.
Ze Gao was born in China in 1992. He is a photographer, painter, curator, national senior photographer, and makeup artist in China. He studied fine arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and obtained an MFA in Photography, Video, and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He was also admitted into the Professional Teaching Materials for Students of Photography in Higher Education Institutions in China. His works have been showcased in many exhibitions in the United States, Europe, Korea, Singapore, and China. 
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