Mid-Autumn Blood Moon

from The Last Tribe on Earth by Anthony Tao, Liane Halton

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$1 USD or more
Buy the Full Digital Album

lyrics

Mid-Autumn Blood Moon

We cowered under cold and cassia wine,
Certain conversations untouched across the dinner table,
Hazarding to ascend with offers of cockscomb
Or descend into that garden where women can ask
Flowers to prophesy the number and sex of their children.

God or demon, will you anchor or steer?

In the morning on the day after the last sun
I could not say what horns sounded from toad kings’ throats
Or faces lifted off the sand with scars burnished by change,
Just that
The empurpling horizon teetered across a central pillar
As a great fight raged with archers’ stars and the broad sword of wind.

Just that
The empurpling horizon teetered across a central pillar
As a great fight raged with archers’ stars and the broad sword of wind.

In after-sun on morning of last day
Could I not say what sounds off kings and toads
Lift burnished faces sanded by scars,
The pilloried, teetering, just,
Purpled across changed horizon
As archers and stars with wind and sword fight a broad rage.

Pilloried, purple, teetering
Stars with sword and wind fight broad rage

Would it tip toward the future, depositing us on rock, huddled and together?

Or, with the creep of shadow over an unbent Immortal, would it fall
The other side, causing us to slide like mud
Flush into gully
As rain?

credits

from The Last Tribe on Earth, released March 20, 2019

license

about

Anthony Tao, Liane Halton Beijing, China

LIANE HALTON graduated from Rhodes University in South Africa in classical guitar performance and composition. ANTHONY TAO is an editor and writer whose poetry has appeared in publications such as Prairie Schooner, Borderlands, The Cortland Review, Kartika Review, Frontier, Asian Cha, etc. ... more