Five by
Allan Peterson
LIMITATIONS
To each material its tolerance as with marble
so even gods must be braced against a stump
as you see in sculpture
The divine is never self supporting it needs props
like the object you use for that place on your back
you cannot reach
SHOWOFF
Flying face first fast
then stopping abruptly
without pitching forward
or missing the branch entirely
the redstart perfectly alights
I hear a voice say King Me
LESSON PLAN
In shop class we made pitchforks
for our mothers
They called them fire tongs
but we knew they were vengeance
required in the curriculum
before the cypress knee lamps
ORDER
I love species that end in elegans
that we recognize grace in all taxonomies
affection for life among the even invisible
species in genus your hand in mine
Kingdom Phylum Class
RELIEF
A man inhaled a seed without knowing
I inhaled a gnat as you have
Nicolai was found with a tree in his lung
relieved it wasn’t cancer
I coughed I exhaled small wings
Allan Peterson’s most recent book is This Luminous New and Selected Poems (Panhandler Books). Some other titles include Precarious; All the Lavish in Common (Juniper Prize, U Mass Press), and Fragile Acts (McSweeney’s), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives and writes in Oregon. Allan Peterson is online at allanpeterson.net.