How Many Bowling Balls Can We Hold?
🌚 New Moon poem and thoughts by guest Shawna Stoltzfoos @waltzgoose
Good New Moon to you. Does that give me away? "She doesn't know about the New Moon," you are saying to yourself while shaking your head. "She's beautiful, but her head is filled with air."
But I've been asked to contribute as a guest for the New Moon, and I am an excellent guest. I take my shoes off at the door, I eat what is set before me, I do the dishes while telling an amusing anecdote, and I leave by 9pm. I can hang.
What's obvious about the New Moon is that it marks a new piece of time, and what a piece of time we're in. I find myself holding The Old and The New with greater and greater difficulty; it's like holding five bowling balls at once. I can sort of do it, awkwardly, but how am I supposed to do anything else?Â
Take a deep breath with me, grow a new arm with me, maybe a new leg. We can hold all the bowling balls, I think. We can expand our capacities to hold even this: The Newer. The Now. The Next Thing. We can hot potato around until someone has a free space. We can do it, we can do it. We can do it together, under the New Moon, where (I think) some new capacity magic occurs.
Anyway, here's a new poem. Thanks to Chad for having me.
November
Have you heard about rhomboids?
Serratus anterior?
There is the clavicle,Â
Whom you know
(If you haven't met her,
you'd LOVE her)
The therapist said to me,
"These are like a coat hanger,"
Which I think makes me the coat
Pulled out by my collar for November
My Gramps said
They used to give you whiskey
For giving blood
It makes me feel warm
In my belly to talk to him
Like a robin with a soft red front
He says aliens are real
Because too many people seen 'em
They can't all be lying and
I am a coat outside looking up
Looking toward December or
Whatever's Up There Coming Down
Coat hanger bending gracefully
Back toward what's already on the ground
Shawna Stoltzfoos is a writer and artist in Lancaster, PA. Follow her on Instagram and Substack.
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