Charles Rafferty

Sky Map

When I was a boy, there was a sky map published in the Friday night paper. It showed us the
planets, the phases of the moon, the stick figures of our horoscopes. Once there was a comet, so
after dinner we stood barefoot in the grass while our eyes adjusted. It was like a thimbleful of
cloud refusing to float away. Now, decades later, my own children look up to where I’m pointing.
The mosquitoes are out; they are missing their favorite show. After all this time, the stars are
swirling at terrible speeds that, nightly, we fail to notice.

Charles Rafferty has a new collection of prose poems from BOA Editions – A Cluster of Noisy Planets. His novel, Moscodelphia, was published by Woodhall Press. Currently, he co-directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College and teaches at the Westport Writers’ Workshop.