Eating the Moon in Cotulla, TX

A trip to Laredo is like breaking open the sky.

Each long row of wheat meets the eye 

before it sloughs into desert, where the occasional hawk, 

in a few concentric turns, identifies a weak movement. 

I know this place. The place in between. 

I have seen limbs of prickly pear hovering in the still, hot air, 

clustered and distorted like a reef in reverse.

I have seen the hay bales lead me to ranch houses 

with tin foil winks on every window 

and a museum of appliances on every porch,

sliding from one world to another,

where there are trucks without wheels, 

willows without spirits, and mesquites with nothing to lose.

I have seen the sun own the land. I have seen it bake 

into our hands. And I have seen it sleep in a dark coverlet

while the sky opens loose, and the coyotes, in their constellation,

propose a trick. A star crosses with intelligence. 

A rabbit becomes an antique. At the gas station in Cotulla, 

I eat the moon in the form of a pie. A real U.F.O. in cellophane,

a chemically unctuous sweet. Each bite, with the physics of an asteroid,

crumbles onto the asphalt where purpling black spheres of gum

have each staked a claim on the cosmos. There is no claim

that cannot be shifted. There is no orbit that cannot be redone.

I have a stepfather who I call a father, who believes other life forms

are out there, far beyond our boastful sun. And I have seen

this moon pie has no bloodline. I have seen it orbit from

one home to another, a pre-made kindness at a pit stop 

where something in the brush is changing up its cry.

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“I wrote this poem about the stretch of land between San Antonio and Laredo, my nostalgia for Moon Pies, and the mysteries of our origins. It’s also dedicated to road trips with my dad.”
—Analicia Sotelo