Tonight the mottled moon rises
from a wino’s begging cup.

Fireflies carry its candescence
everywhere, their green thoughts

connecting the suburbs at night
like dots on a video game.

America, this is your light.
Molting, molting, the cold grass

holds anything without a song:
broken glass, long bicycle spokes,

the skull of a hummingbird.
The cold grass holds a wind

darker than the expired fireflies
trapped inside a young boy’s jars.

When the weathervanes snap off,
whirling across the night sky

like luminous ninja stars,
one will strike a begging-cup,

spilling the moon into puddles.
America, this is your light,

but it makes nothing shine.
And so we follow the snakes

across the cold, molting grass,
taking the greater darkness inside.