Some Fictions
In a little geologic morphology, my cut has puckered
into Lake Chad,
than an airplane, an arrowhead, and Frances said
for three days a fly
with blood eyes and serum-colored wings
wings. In another, the car-hit oriole upside is the gutter
became a candy wrapper
to soothe me, though in the instant between them
—the body and the gust of wind—
there was space to moan O, making a sound
like the bubble of dome light.
Water clearing its throat at the rapids then speaking
inwardly to itself,
a long satisfying sigh from Fall Brook to the river.
I can be hypnotized. I am a leaf on spider thread
spinning till dizzy, till I am a sleeping bullet
and wake having hit my mark, twisted,
remembering nothing.
Or I might waken to dragonflies orbiting a post,
a lizard eying me sideways,
ocean turning its pages at the shoe.
I might think once upon a time the dead under water,
dead under earth, ate fire, ate air,
but it was not nourishing, not filling, healing took too long.
Copyright ©2000 Allan Peterson