“Love Poem for a Super Blood Wolf Moon over the Mountains and also a New Build Apartment Complex in Asheville” by Emily Blair

Her dog is large & white under parking-lot lights & I want him
to howl, feel the wolf-blood in his veins,
but instead he sits, five degrees with the wind,
to sniff the air. He’s deaf, so he is unnaturally calm, because to a deaf dog,
the entire world is right in front of his eyes & snout.
She & I crane our necks to watch a dark shadow pass over.
I tell her about history and astronomy. She tells me about the psychology of group-think.
I tell her about dancing fever.
She tells me she’s glad I’m here.
Soon, our fingers stiffen with cold & the moon moves so quickly
now that we are here to witness
the coverage, the hide, the waiting
hung above us. Do people kiss under the moon?
And the moon, even so far removed,
blushes.

—–

Emily Blair is a queer Appalachian poet and blue-collar scholar currently living and teaching community college in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her work has been recently published or is forthcoming in The New Southern Fugitives, Pidgeonholes, Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art, The Pinch Journal, Riggwelter Press, and Occulum Journal. More information about her and her work can be found on her website, emilyblairpoet.com.