By the same author
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Small Maps of the World
Moon Dance
Brooke Biaz
Parlor Press
West Lafayette, Indiana
www.parlorpress.com
Parlor Press LLC, Anderson, SC 29621
© 2008 by Parlor Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Biaz, Brooke.
Moon dance / Brooke Biaz.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-60235-044-1 (alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-043-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-045-8 (adobe ebook)
I. Title.
PR9619.3.H324M66 2008
823’.914--dc22
2007048419
Printed on acid-free paper.
Cover image: “Sun, Moon, and Earth Aligned” by Pinobarile. © 2007 by Pinobarile. Used by permission.
Cover design by David Blakesley
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paperback, cloth, and Adobe eBook formats from Parlor Press on the WWW at www.parlorpress.com or at brick-and-mortar and online bookstores everywhere. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, SC 29621, or e-mail [email protected].
To the folks at Mission Control: it’s been a long time coming, and thanks for the cheese.
Contents
7 Lucille in the Sky with Diamonds
8 A Perfectly Ordinary Rainbow
Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes . . .
—Van Morrison
A search has begun to locate the original film footage of man’s first steps on the Moon.
—BBC News, Aug. 14, 2006
Sc.1
Mare Fecunditatis
Probably the first seeds of the idea were sown by the great fantastic author Jules Verne—he directed my thought along certain channels, then came desire, and after that the work of the mind.
—Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Rocket Scientist
1 Life or Death
Word comes this morning that the lodgers are returning. My mother’s lovers are returning and I, Maxim Moonface, must open the curtains. I must calm my heart which dances the Monkey two-step these days to the beat of a pace-o-matic gizmo. I must keep quiet about Che in the kitchen, who’s been working the entire month to restore our appearances. . . . Who says, after all, that he won’t turn out to be the Warhol of muscle? The Picasso of skin and bone? The . . . Of course, his hands aren’t what they used to be. Andique Garnet’s nose, for instance, has re-emerged ill-affixed, long and twisted whereas, if I recall, it was once perfectly invisible. Also, inevitably, there is the question of Dorothy’s breasts. Inevitably and unavoidably, because these breasts do not appear as a reflection of her true spiritual self. Perky breasts and suited to the task of filling a cup; but they are made, whenl all’s said and done, out of her armpits. . . . O but let me not be too critical. After all, Che, skilled as he is, has nothing left to work from but the covers of IT magazine and Suck. No surprise, therefore, that several of our brand spanking genitals bear an uncanny resemblance to the yoni and linga of famous but now retired persons. Our Mounts of Venus, for instance, are all turning out like that of Ms Germaine Greer! . . . But at least, this morning, all my babaloos have heard the good news. . . . That’s them screeching their delight in the room next door as the sirens, my pear-shaped partners, stand on the verandah pounding the door, shouting “Let us in! Let us in!” and raising their harpies’ arms at the sight of yet another moonlit night. And to think this entire flock once swooped on young Moonface unrequitedly, around and around in the dark, their hands plumbing enthusiastically for his moderately sized but crusty Mare Fecunditatis (which Che has now given a certain aged genital majesty, I feel, with ribs like brass amulets and a foreskin of such momentous rolls that it looks not unlike a blossoming camellia). Round and round me like a feathered human mandala, barely dressed in cheesecloths and seersuckers and the flowers of white frangipani in wonderfully long chains, orbiting bobble-eyed and carrying several dogged-eared copies of Love’s Body. . . . Whereas these days all they wish to do is to fly out to freaking Antigua!, or The Maldives, or The Whitsundays. Cutesy plump 747 tourists in cabins built of aero-fibre. (Man! technology astounds me.) Them making noises about broken staircases and fallen arches and Maxim’s latest offspring being born into “Clear water.”
“So take a holiday,” I
