Weekly Poem: ‘Paper Kisses, Paper Moon’

By Haines Eason

             A word spoken in due season, how good it is.

Do you remember a clearer water? Paled sea,
horizon’s band. The sound the moon we drove

after. Through fog bank, sun. Remember,
the northern route, then going down south —

warming hands between the legs. The places
toss and mumble, one, the next, are breath

against your face. Seasons snow in around
you as large cities, steep towns — are recorded

sonatas, ones everyone knows, opaque.
Remember, the southern route — rain

rhythmic in its wash against car glass.
A want of words then for the drowning

sound in the chest — cavern of wood instruments
accepting a tide of betrayal, a tide of betrothal.

Or rowboats, anchored in dark. Tensed with frost
their canvases crack…a boy snapping lacquered

sheets, he pulls too hard as the horizon moves.
He or heat — hard to say. One day a snow,

another, rain. A trip up, a trip down
the coast. A radio, in evening, left on.

Haines Eason was the 2010 winner of the Beau Boudreaux Poetry Prize from Cream City Review. He has published poems in many journals, including New England Review, Yale Review and American Letters & Commentary. His chapbook, “A History of Waves,” was chosen by Mark Doty for a 2010 PSA Chapbook Fellowship.

The video above was filmed at AWP’s 2011 Conference & Bookfair in Washington, D.C. Special thanks to the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.

Camera and audio work by the NewsHour’s Crispin Lopez and Kiran Moodley.