Pitt Poetry Series

<i>The Painted Bunting’s Last Molt</i> explores fatherhood, parenting, and separation anxiety; and the ways in which time and memory are both a prison and a giver of joy. Fifteen years in the making, Virgil Suárez’s new collection uses his mother’s return to Cuba after 50 years of exile as a catalyst to muse on familial relationships, death, and the passing of time.<br><b>Moon Decima</b><br>If it were the Eucharist, it’d be hard to swallow,<br>this moon of lost impressions, a boy in deep water,<br>something tickling his skin. This memory of weight-<br>lessness—a kite that somehow still manages to hover<br>in the dog mouth blackness of sky. This is a cut out<br>moon of lost children, or is it a savior’s moon?<br>This boy will float on home, or be swallowed<br>by the water. Above the pines and mangroves,<br>this moon hangs unrelenting. Is it the one eye<br>of an indifferent God that remains open just so?