The twenty-sixth Moon Prize on today's full moon goes to Lisa Marguerite Mora's exquisite poem "Illuminated Manuscript."

Illuminated Manuscript

by Lisa Marguerite Mora

Cracked face of a clock frozen

to the wrong minute,

outside a restless grimy tide washes

through shallow footprints

now they are puddles, and sand crabs

scrabble for sustenance.

I could be like them lost in the certainty

of sand and oxygen and angry

wayward waves. They comprise the universe --

excoriating wrench and rhythm, yes I could be lost

to the riptide's deadly yank, my limbs, my head lolling, no longer

fighting.

It would be easy.

But recently there is this other (me) that can frame

the whole scene and all its visceral misery

within a border of twined flowers as in an illuminated

manuscript

the page laden

between my fingers.

It is but one page.

Where do I suspend disbelief?

* * * * *

"Illuminated Manuscript" was originally published in a slightly different form in Literary Landscapes, a publication of the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society.

Lisa Marguerite Mora has had work published in Rattle, ONTHEBUS, Rebelle Society, The Urban Howl, Cultural Weekly, Public Poetry Series, Literary Mama, and California Quarterly, among many others, including a Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Prize and in 2017 tied First Place for Dandelion Press Micro Fiction Contest. Recently she has finished a first novel and is at work on her second. Lisa studied with author Carolyn See at UCLA where she received a Bachelors in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis. A story editor and consultant, she also conducts creative writing workshops in the Los Angeles area.