Pencil Moon

By Mike Lewis-Beck


“One small step for a man,” Fiona says about the earth moon walker. 

Recording the revelation with a Swiss drawing pencil, I ponder man. 

Then woman Fiona. 

This pencil does not help: F-category, off-dimension, renegade, yellow. 

What if poets land on the moon? 

They will know the pencil ferrule, respect lunar silence, scribble its pale face. 

In a desert Mexican night I toss Corona bottles at moon dogs on the roof, gazing at Fiona. 

Pencil-point clay & graphite trace the lemon beam starring our finger-tips. 

Are the astronauts eating space bars, soy and almond? 

Good parts, any good pencil has two crafted parts, a top & a bottom, lead filling the bottom, top over the bottom pressed together. 

Some Mexicans say the moon launch’s not real, just a TV spectacle. 

But Fiona knows the man, & the moon, recording it with a triangular No.2, her HB.



Mike Lewis-Beck writes from Iowa City.  He has pieces in American Journal of Poetry, Apalachee Review, Blue Collar Review, Cortland Review, Chariton Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Ekphrastic Review, Guesthouse, Heavy Feather Review, Inquisitive Eater, Pilgrimage, Pennine Platform,  Southword, and Wapsipinicon Almanac, among other venues.