"Reading Faulkner at 17, You Foresee Your Reckoning"

I love this poem by Catherine Pierce, posted to Slate. My hippie high school let me do an independent study in Southern Literature, so I actually WAS a 17-year-old reading Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury on my own. It was a whole different experience when I read it again in a college class on Faulkner, but neither experience was better or worse...just delightfully distinct.

The harvest moon hangs heavy,
a gourd. Your desires heave inside you
like a blood wave. Ignore the cat

pulling on your trousers. Ignore
the cicadas bossing you from the elms.
See yourself in this hot gold light.

You are the brother in love with Caddy.
You are the idiot son. Your mouth dumb.
Your mind lucent. Everything you want

sharp as the cat's bite at your ankle. You pull
your foot back. A yowl, pointed as teeth.
The moon is what will fall on you.