Fall 2023

Last Time We Called it the Last Vacation

By Daniel Edward Moore

Appalachia broke us down on Highway 23
as roadkill’s religious survival guide
taught us the power of decapitated dreams
making the moon more lovely.

With eyes stuck on the truck’s soft kill,
eighteen wheels split us down the middle
as cheap black coffee held revival in our mouths
sending hallelujahs speeding all the way to Portsmouth

where a motel with our names written in red
paid minimum wage for a maximum stay,
if aging parents last two more weeks and
smiles are the reason we came.

We Tend to Be Fond of Movement

Falling isn’t always from grace:
heaven’s gift of unbearable heat
inspiring summer’s golden stare
to scorch us infidel ants.

It’s probably just an unscheduled stop
on the body’s tour of ruins, your
arthritic joints of sterilized steel,
stitches poking through the center of me,
trying to escape my stomach for years.

It’s true, the sea is minutes away,
but we’d rather risk
the deep’s cold blue
on the shore of our eyes last blink.

Life is not a guard in a speedo
blowing a whistle at the drowning,
it’s the reason you rise and climb back on,
the reason the mast on my deck prevails
as you ride me like a storm.


Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His poems are forthcoming in The Cape Rock, Notre Dame Review, Front Range Review, Ocotillo Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, San Pedro River Review, Rock & Sling and The Broadkill Review. His book, Waxing the Dents, was the finalist for the Brick Road Poetry Prize and published in 2020. His recent book, Psalmania was a finalist for the Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry.

Fall 2023