Susana Plotts-Pineda
Nocturne
a tight sun draws over and kisses
a tight sun draws over and kisses
the small red moon, brought to its feet
by wells of proven night, night proofed
and incidental, its accident a smattering
of bright seams and trembling nests
impure coordinates of distressed, yellow
limbs and a song too drawn out to imbibe
in its domesticated sphere, the realm
of influence all but too clear under this
rotunda, perfected dome of night, a scale
imposed on the watchmen that guard
eons of carbon, acetate, flourishing
memory streams, as they watch the film
all morning and all night, figures dance
spasmodic on the screen, yellow
embers outline deer in star shape, tendril glitter
fractals an electric map, light
cascades across the nightscreen, becomes
as real as the watchmen forgetting
all together their burnt outline.
Susana Plotts-Pineda is an artist and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Works & Days, Lana Turner, The Brooklyn Rail, and others. Her first book of poems, In Order to Extract the Memory It Is Of Course Necessary to Build the Room is forthcoming with Futurepoem in 2026.a tight sun draws over and kisses
a tight sun draws over and kisses
the small red moon, brought to its feet
by wells of proven night, night proofed
and incidental, its accident a smattering
of bright seams and trembling nests
impure coordinates of distressed, yellow
limbs and a song too drawn out to imbibe
in its domesticated sphere, the realm
of influence all but too clear under this
rotunda, perfected dome of night, a scale
imposed on the watchmen that guard
eons of carbon, acetate, flourishing
memory streams, as they watch the film
all morning and all night, figures dance
spasmodic on the screen, yellow
embers outline deer in star shape, tendril glitter
fractals an electric map, light
cascades across the nightscreen, becomes
as real as the watchmen forgetting
all together their burnt outline.