On accident, an old man chopping at bamboo shoots nearly decapitates a microscopic newborn girl hiding inside one, then, with intent, raises her as if she were his own daughter. The girl blossoms into a noblewoman, and at her age of marrying, the moonpeople come down parading as an army and demand the old man return their princess. As it turns out, she’s an E.T., a small white separated from her kind. The moon drops a baby, then it waits until she’s settled into life on Earth to take her back. It’s a cruel mistress. [A card on the table shows two Anubi holding phallic ankhs. It reads “XVIII. The Moon.”] Betwixt the dog gods runs a stream of blood, a scar across a valley. The valley is Gehenna, where King Ahaz of Judah and countless other pagan men and women char their sons alive in tribute to the demon Moloch, whose calf-headed effigy resides there. The tykes are made to walk between twin lanes of fire and emerge at Moloch’s foot as black skeletons not unlike Life-in-Death while the infants are boiled brown within Moloch’s bowels. This card comes from the Thoth tarot deck. The key to this depiction of the moon is its waning, a phase foretelling a weird, deceptive life and one too many Dark Nights of the Soul.
Luke U., also known as Milwaukee’s Worst, is a disillusioned MFA in poetry. His interests lie in apocalyptic Christianity and the American unknown. His work appears in Apocalypse Confidential and the Passage Prize anthology.
MAXIMUS 