Andrew K. Peterson


YOU MUST BELIEVE IN SPRING
for Bill Evans


must i ???   
got the morbs
                                             breaking ritual 
                                             with cordials
                                                                                          elemental 
                                                                                          essences			                                     
		


                                                  frankincense, argan, myrrh 
  (… again with the myrrh?)
                                                  across cupid’s kettle drum




                                                  “one morning i waked very early”




                                                                              many thousands 
                                                                           gone without a song
        		



                                 the waking source
                                                                                a mirrorlike coolness





                                             reversing form 	&	
                                                                                          function

		



OOOOOOOORRRRRRAAANNNNNNGGGEEEEE

pulls        across        the        surface       of       an orange







               obsidian dance

                                                 ashes rust

                                                                           sparks soak


“might we may”

meet again
head on





as solar soldiers soldered to the shoulders of the sphinx






                                                 nothing left unopened
                                                 nothing left 
                                                                        	  unsaid
 


EASTER IN BABEL

buttoned to the gold
anchors in heavy blue
wool allergenic in heat
i kneel, mouth an un
familiar prayer to 
mingle with the flow
ers sewn to cloches 
& fascinators unlike
my looser pleas 
pass thru the blood-
stained fingerprints 
pressed above my bed 
to bless the souls 
of those i love who 
live, the ones who don’t 
and still we love 
thee too, closer clouds
pluck abstract harps  
or so i’m told, or so 
i’m bold to build temple 
in my mind around 
where violet flags fly 
above the pride
i parachute down 
with a three-legged dog 
strapped to my legs 
if i squeeze too hard 
he’ll bite, i’ll loosen, 
we’ll fall into the burning 
aloe-smear of wax & fats 
translucent ocean green
tower-displaced thresholds
so into dawn we lower
arrow the clearway 
gentle in teutonic bloom
to calm the hound 
to calm the hound within 
as below, so above 
and i don’t know his name



XANTHIUM PARACHUTE


she is painting the river 
that runs through
all three worlds:

the quiet passion
the talented maple
cocklebur and bull

�

to shed tears
to shed the past
to shed skin
to shed water like a duck
to shed leaves
to shed the blood of thine enemy
to shed thy Light on me!

�

you are everywhere
with every heartbeat
roaring of an ocean

: the sound of a bell ringing
: the sound of a conch shell
: the roll of distant thunder
 


THE GREATEST


under my bare feet
another spring gone past, un-
conscious, undefea-THUD!
 
A wounded monarch crash-lands nearby, struggles to regain flight under the weight of its human-sized butterfly 
costume wings, ruining the last haiku of the season with the ambition and amplitude of its greatness…

though my heart, it 
beats like crazy…
and someone’s got to fall

MONO NO AWARE
for my parents


A memory lives on the banks of another season, dies as flakes in the mouths of tellers (left unopened, nothing else is said). Commuting home from the bank, a man sits stranded on the highway for hours, sleeps in his car until he’s rescued by The Guard. Far away, in a little town in a little cape on a little hill, a woman waits by the hearth, sleeps on the floor, and keeps the fire warm. At three a.m. a drunk rams a snowbank mistaking the driveway for an on-ramp. On the windowsill, a white cat watches the white sky pelt the earth with its wicked dreams. The great blizzard catches on her tongue.



Andrew K. Peterson is an editor and author of five poetry books, most recently A blue nocturne notebook (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2021). A chapbook The Big Game Is Every Night was mailed to the White House in 2017 alongside other publications from Moria Books’ Locofo Chaps as collective protest. Another chapbook bonjour Meriwether and the rabid maps (Fact-Simile) was part of an exhibition on poets’ maps at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. His poetry has also appeared as part of The Earth Archive exhibition at RISD Museum in Providence. A co-founder/editor of the online lit journal summer stock, he received an MFA in Poetry from Naropa University's Kerouac School. He lives in Boston.

 
 

previous page     contents     next page