We saw dog hair caught in splinters, twisters in the sink,
the sheet-covered moon indicating sadness,
dust balls moving like storms under the furniture.
armored animals drilling into the earth
We heard the underworld shuffling below the floor
We saw speech as a river system, some letters
silent, shells and shoulder blades doubling as shovels,
inflections as moods, sentences, enzymes, drought
and we knew there was a decline in handwriting,
the need for statuary, that history inhibited pianos
We dressed up to visit the chilling dead Our sorrows
no longer dropped at the same speed
Allan Peterson’s recent books are: Other Than They Seem, winner of the Snowbound Chapbook Prize from Tupelo Press; Precarious, 42 Miles Press, a finalist for The Lascaux Prize; Fragile Acts, McSweeney’s Poetry Series, a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle and Oregon Book Awards. His New & Selected Poems, “This Luminous,” is forthcoming in late 2018 from Panhandler Books.
