Blooming Moons: 2 Poems by Michelle Masood

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dream in which the world stays the same except for me

In the dream, I’m smaller, more tolerable. I’m better 

at making flower crowns, my room is always clean, 

and I can keep up with the rate the earth spins at. In 

the dream, I know what light tastes like. I put the 

newest fruits in my tea, and the bees let me hold them

without pain. This time, I don’t cry when the sun sets, 

I don’t burn everything I touch. I un-kill every skeleton 

in my closet. I never eat alone. I don’t lie and say I watered

the plants when I didn’t. I water the plants. I stand out

in the rain because I can. For once, I let the 

water cycle make its course instead of mourning. 

In the dream, I don’t mourn. I never have to 

Ars Poetica (A Glossary Of Poetic Terms)

A poem is a warm jar of honey. 

A line break is a cold silver 

spoon. Enjambment is the meeting point. 

A metaphor is the closest house to yours, 

like a simile is like home, just different. 

A poem is the sound a glass makes

before it hits the ground. A stanza 

is a room, whose floor is full of broken glass. 

There are shoes at the door. Anaphora

is the feeling of hot air following an open door. 

A poem is a jacket with a faulty zipper, 

on the rack of a thrift store, where everyone

has tried it on. A caesura is the last breath 

a swimmer takes before leaving, before finding

that jacket, before putting it on. 

A poem is a dog that won’t leave you alone. That

keeps following you. A page turn tells the dog 

to go home. Metre is the dog barking, every night 

when sirens pass by. Verse is an ambulance, 

speeding, on its way. 

A poem is an empty stomach, growling. A reader

is a home-cooked meal, still hot. A writer is 

a potter, a riverbank, whatever takes rock 

and shapes it into something new. A writer didn’t drop the glass, 

they just called it pretty in the only way it knew how. 

A poem is the last good memory on a bad day. 

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Michelle Masood is the bird pecking at your window, please let her in. She’s been published by the League of Canadian Poets, Menaces Zine, Pluvia Lit Mag, and others. Mainly, she likes going to the library, fruit, and living out her Pakistani ancestors’ wishes by writing poetry and thinking about the moon. When she remembers, sometimes she’ll update her instagram @domestic.partner.

Artist’s Statement: Poetry has always been, at its core, a form of art to remind people of the human condition. My first tastes of poetry through slams recorded and posted online feel simultaneously years away and just yesterday. It sticks. It’s a way to find connection. Art, especially poetry, is a vessel made for reminding people that they aren’t alone in the world. Other people are watching the same sun set in the evening, you aren’t the only one staring out your bedroom window looking for the moon. Growing up, I could never really find a place where I ‘fit in’ and poetry was the thing that created that home for me. I would be a completely different person today if not for reading and writing mountains and mountains of words, and even now I still don’t think I could live without it. I’m trying to find the perfect way to hear and say that you are not alone, trying to track down every young girl who needs that reassurance, trying to give them the same hope poetry gave me. 

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1 November 2022