The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: "Call Her by Her Name" by Bianca Spriggs

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“Uhura: On the Moon”

Vulcan has no moon, Miss Uhura.
—Lieutenant Spock

I was born during a dusk-storm.
The moment I stopped breathing
through water and tasted first, sweet
air, the rain ceased, and the moon moved
from behind two terrible clouds
to see herself in my face.
I’ve slept beneath her reflection,
her filmy fingers making a web
of the world, leaving me
the trapped star in its center.
I’ve made love beneath her
in an open field on a night that felt
like wading through cream.
I remember the first time I dreamt
of her up close—she was sheathed
in gold and gossamer damask.
I wanted to stick my tongue out
and lick her bloom—how did she
drift so? An amaryllis rooted
in the sky, elder sister to stars.

This selection comes from Bianca Spriggs’ poetry collection Call Her by Her Name, available now from Northwestern University Press. Purchase your copy here.

Bianca Spriggs is an award-winning poet and multidisciplinary artist from Lexington, Kentucky, The author of four collections of poetry, most recently, Call Her by Her Name (Northwestern University Press) and the forthcoming The Galaxy Is a Dance Floor (Argos Books). She is the managing editor for pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture and poetry editor for Apex Magazine. You can learn more about her work here: www.biancaspriggs.com.

Staci R. Schoenfeld is a recipient of 2015 NEA Fellowship for Poetry, grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and residencies from the Ragdale Foundation and Albee Foundation. She is a PhD student at University of South Dakota, assistant editor for poetry at South Dakota Review, and an assistant editor at Sundress Publications. Recent and forthcoming publications include poems in Mid-American Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Room Magazine, fiction in Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, and non-fiction in The Manifest Station.