Waxing Moon
A poem by Bonita Lini Markowski

Waxing Moon

I try to hold the moon
in my hands like Nonni held
her rosary; try to pass hard
moon rocks through my fingers like holy beads.

But three years after you stopped
being here, they say my grief should be
soft, silky strand memorials to comfort me.

She said, the Virgin’s blue cloak sheltered
her, always. I shield myself
with the afghan I watched her
moss stitch, a blue portico,
a memento of wool I use to cover my head so full

of death, but the moon, waxing,
exposes me—I harden in its beam.

About the Author:

Bonita Lini Markowski, poet and educator, lives and teaches in northeastern PA. She received her MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. Her poems have appeared in the Gyroscope Review, PA Bards Northeastern Review 2020, River and South Review, 2021, PA Bards Eastern Poetry Review, 2021, and Sonic Boom Journal, the anthology, The Power of the Feminine I, and are forthcoming in BirdHouse Magazine, and Currents in the Electric City: A Scranton Anthology, (July 2024). Her poetry was also selected for the award- winning Poetry in Transit 2023, Luzerne County, PA.

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