Moonrock
My father stood watch
over night’s deficient tidepool:
the weight of it so upon him,
he locked himself in the car to think.
By day he’d wear us
into onionskin. At night, he’d flee
to the driveway where he lived
in unkempt hair.
He was the phantom weeping
powdery tears into the ashtray.
He tattooed legal pads with a furious
manuscript about the world’s
petty campaign to own him.
But then, I only saw the man
through glass, a disputed
and conspiratorial thing.
Carmen Giménez Smith’s “Moonrock” first appeared in Issue 70 of the minnesota review. Since that issue was published in 2008, Giménez Smith has published a memoir, Bring Down the Little Birds (University of Arizona, 2010), three poetry collections—Goodbye, Flicker (University of Massachusetts, 2012), The City She Was (Center for Literary Publishing, 2011) and Odalisque in Pieces (University of Arizona, 2009)—and three poetry chapbooks—Reason’s Monster (Dusie Kollectiv, 2011), Can We Talk Here (Belladonna Books, 2011) and Glitch (Dusie Kollectiv, 2009). She has also co-edited a fiction anthology, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (Penguin, 2010). She is the recipient of a 2011 American Book Award, the 2011 Juniper Prize for Poetry, and a 2011-2012 fellowship in creative nonfiction from the Howard Foundation. Formerly a Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she now teaches in the creative writing programs at New Mexico State University and Ashland University, while serving as the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Puerto del Sol and the publisher of Noemi Press. She lives with her husband, the writer Evan Lavender-Smith, and their two children in Las Cruces, New Mexico. You can learn more about Giménez Smith and her work at http://www.carmengimenezsmith.com/
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