12.3.25

Two Poems by Andrew K. Peterson

Year In Streaming
 
summering down
the child and siren align   
hands incomplete
as dancers waxing
in a rainbow moonstone
 
“can you stop suffering
for, like, a minute?”  
do you mean could 
burn through
wave by wave
 
at what difference?
in a spiral, crocodile
& roses aaaaallll day
teach myself (again) 
to rest is not to squander
 
lighten as the sun hits
off the cymbal nn-tsk
back in the day 
when we were planets 
to a plum, swan-swank
 
gonging in between
 
 
 
napkinful of sour patch kids
 
Seven gather in the conference room to discuss the market readiness report, so the office is mostly empty. Liv researches bathing suits that may look good on her. George is standing at his desk looking at his phone with the flat tone of a COO gone soft on matrices. Peterson returns to his desk with a third cup of coffee and a napkinful of sour patch kids, resumes listening to Dick Gallup reading poems from the evening of June 21, 1978. The crowd claps earnest and appreciative after most of them, while Dick turns a page, takes a breath - sometimes through his nose, sometimes through his mouth, some both - and then he begins again. Before “Virtue”: I seem to be missing something he says and lights another cigarette. In “Philosophy Take a Walk” Dick reads, stress is mostly bullshit. What will become of Dowling Hall, the market and its readiness? What virtue hath a man who hath not the command of his own intention? The year is 2025, and, to be sure, there is still much work to be done…