For sixpence you get a creepy crawly moon
A leftover from last year’s carnival.
It hung over the ladder
Strung against tarpaulin.
My pale lunatic
Seeks a lunar eclipse
A glimpse
Of the old grapevine
And magicwoman
Hung along the tarpaulin
My pale stale lunatic.

It was the twopenny moon
Sold off to the kabadi
When the show got over
It was a moon of trinkets
Hung against the tragic queen’s bosom
A heaving moon
We tore it in the shed
To make boats
For my tattered lunatic.

For many months
We flattened our aluminium moon
So we could wrap our city in it.
It grew like flattened dough
And we rolled on it
Wrapped our fingers in it.
Swam in it
Our molten moon.
Me and my brittle lunatic.

…

Atreyee is a poet, writer and anthropologist who teaches at the Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, at Sonipat, Haryana. She is currently conducting research on the Bhakti tradition of Krishna worship in the Braj region of Uttar Pradesh.