Oyster full moon
to give, to rot, to make do

October is a plant change
dropping an eggplant plum
inert to the sky,
trinkets

It’s the shell that counts.
We want the shell.

Below the sky around us we see
a kidney-shaped pool,
iron red and salmon pink.
We lost the pearl.

Shira Dentz is author of five books including SISYPHUSINA (winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize 2021), and two chapbooks. Her writing appears in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, VOLT, Gulf Coast, New American Writing, Brooklyn Rail, and NPR, and she’s a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize and Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Award.