Christina Hennemann
Oma Fine’s Moon Calendar
At waning moon, Oma Fine planted potatoes and beets,
her stubbly, purple mole trembling. She cut our hair
at new moon so it would grow back thicker (my horsehair
proof of her science), but she refused to serve red meat,
it was fried eggs and ham on bread: ‘Strammer Max’.
She never touched a broom when the moon was round.
This was the time to twist chicken’s necks, the cock
bewitched by the abundance of light, forgetting
his egg-laying hens. Chicken soup with Eierstich,
brewed with the pull of the moon, mended
generations of flu-stricken mouths. Fine lives by
the moon calendar, Grandpa smirked, but
he wouldn’t dare to chop wood when the moon
was in Scorpio, had he not almost lost a finger to the axe?
One winter, Fine’s hands wrinkled and slowed.
The chickens sold, straw and eggshells the only
remains in the coop, till the slimming moon
demanded a cleanse. Lunar eclipse: Fine, tucked
into bed, still heard the hens cackle from below.
Fine long gone to heaven, my mother found love again,
online, at sixty years of age. Cup-eyed, she swore
the moon was in Cancer on their first date, that she dreamed
of Fine tapping the mole on her chin with a grin.
I mocked: You silly old hag. But the next full moon night
I woke up from Fine’s cackle, earthy and wild.
Christina Hennemann is an award-winning poet and writer. She’s the author of three poetry chapbooks and received an Agility Award from Arts Council Ireland and a Doyle Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her work appears in Poetry Ireland, Poetry Wales, Anthropocene, The Moth, York Literary Review, The Belfast Review, Impossible Archetype, and elsewhere. www.christinahennemann.com.