Two Poems

Matt Zambito

A Lunar Poem Not Lacking Profanity


“[...] water molecules move around the moon as the lunar
surface warms and cools throughout the day.

Water remains stuck on the moon’s surface until the lunar midday,
when some of the water melts and heats up enough to lift into
the moon’s delicate atmosphere. The water floats around a bit until
it reaches an area cool enough to make it settle back down to the
surface.”

                                  —Kimberly Hickok from LiveScience.com, 7/16/2019


If any shit were holy, then
surely this would be said shit.
How does this awe-causing

story not make headlines daily?
How are we not imploring for
oodles of info: on the moon; on

its galactic hydro-bits floating,
falling, rising, and so on; on
its majesty up there from where

we’ve all secretly dreamed
of seeing Earth? Instead of glory,
the commercial news spews out,

as if a gas pump gone haywire,
a nonstop narrative normalizing:
industrial war; corporate cupidity

for cash; weather reports ignoring
chaos; the Deep-State’s talking
points; kid games played by

millionaires for billionaires;
the cute kitten of the week.
Just try to imagine this world

eclipsed by a worse one if
we each (me too!), guilty of
digging ditzy distractions, paid

close then closer (the closest)
attention to the beauties in
science and the science of beauty:

you can’t. And that’s the front-
page and pious kind of ravishing
scat demanding of an -ology.


Pollution Come Hell or High Water

Following gobbling asparagus, we stream
out residue into gallons of what should be
potable H2O we can turn into our bodies,
not tainted with greened wee. Elsewhere,

Mesozoic marine plants and animals, liquefied
over epochs into the absolute crudest
oil, keep spilling onto shores, killing
the birds dinosaurs evolved into. Elsewhere,
an upstart politician is taking a gluttonous

shower and practicing lying aloud about
plastic island; polar icecaps poisoning oceans
with prehistoric bacteria; benthic trawling
devastating the coral ecosystems and the ideas

held by schools of earthlings swimming
as if they’ve not a care in the world except
fear of just about every-forsaken-thing
moving down there and up here. Elsewhere,

water falling over Niagara is sick as a plague
victim since we beasts, vain in funhouse
mirrors, live as if pathogens. Everywhere,
forever chemicals force us into biologic eternity
faster than an elephant can consume aqua.

Now, there are waves reflecting-the-sky blue,
but have you seen the degree of darkness in
the deep Pacific? Out there, it’s just you, giant
squids, and leagues of our unnecessary ink.

Matt Zambito is the author of The Fantastic Congress of Oddities (Cherry Grove Collections), and two chapbooks, Guy Talk and Checks & Balances (Finishing Line Press). Other poems appear in Slipstream, Common Ground Review, Hiram Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Niagara Falls, he now writes from Wilson, New York.