We stared at the moon, believing we could see
Neil Armstrong bouncing around from crater
to crater, even Sue who’d called it all a crazy

hoax, a stunt taking place on the Hollywood
soundstage where they used to shoot The Mickey
Mouse Club. We wandered into a cornfield

and got high again and tried to find the rum
Sam had hidden that afternoon and when we
got tired, we lay on the ground and stared some

more at the sky. Billy ran his hand up my thigh
and I said stop though I felt lit up, all green
as in go, and when I’d run out of no’s , I

rolled over and did it while the astronauts
and everyone watched: I did it there in the dirt.

–Sarah Freligh,
A Brief Natural History of an American Girl (2012)
Accents Publishing

More from Sarah Freligh:

• “Easy”
• “Depending”
• “Old Flame”
• Sarah Freligh Interview
• “Waitress”

Sarah Freligh is the author of Sort of Gone (Turning Point Books, 2008). Her work has appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Brevity, Barn Owl Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Woman, Third Coast, Tar River Poetry, and Painted Bride Quarterly and on Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac.” Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a poetry grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006, and an Artist’s Exchange grant from the New York State Council for the Arts in 1997. She is a visiting assistant professor of English and creative writing at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.