TAXES, SEEN FROM THE MOON

by Indran Amirthanayagam
 




NASA photo


I walked in the woods 

today, a spring in my step,

the Great Leader had

stepped back from 

his threats 


to the sovereign 

Republic of X,

and my tax deadline 

loomed even clearer; 

no more time 


to distract with poems, 

even this one a lazy 

fingering,  extracting juice 

from the rind of past fears, 

raising arms to God 


to say thank you

for your intervention.

But what’s ten minutes 

to a poet avoiding reckoning 

with the IRS?  Only ten 


minutes to say thanks, 

 to say I love you  and keep 

in touch always. Ten minutes 

to say tomorrow will come—

it already has—

 

despite the terrible words

and bombs exploded

until now in the latest 

killing fields 

of our one Earth


lit by the rising Sun seen 

now for the first time 

by the Artemis crew,

from the dark side 

of the Moon. 



Indran Amirthanayagam writes a SubstackHe has just published Isla itinerante ( Editorial Apogeo, Peru, 2025) and White Space Sonnets ( Sarasavi publishers, Sri Lanka, 2025)His other publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

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