Duane Vorhees writes

zer0moon

New students all took home

this paper sky

with zero moon

rudely redpencilled by

their Jesuit god with Master’s degree

in Education, Elementary.

They tried. It seems unfair:

their first exam,

their brief error;

red, indelibly damned.

So how could they have known before that Fall

that their prof would be such a know-it-all?

The night hangs in the rooms,

this tissue sky,

this zero moon,

the great forever why

stuck like a fallen moon in ceiling space

which they thought all the passing stars should grace.