Influenced — Blackbird Archive

← v14n1, Spring 2015

Listening is one way seeing another

and the skin itself completely nonfiction

one of those gold foil curtains unfolding in space

collecting electrons

Rituals arise out of helplessness

simple repetitions strung together like medicines

used to counteract side effects

Hope was a glimpse of possibility

the tiny hole in the door where you could see

the whole parking lot at once the hallway

a woman beheld seemingly weightless gracefully

coming down from the ceiling on a sash

With such effects every instance is poignant

as are all the bones worldwide drifting

slowly to the bottom of the sea

Perfect description is elusive

as paying bills in goldfish

how the determined body fills with water

to keep the bones afloat

body hope mortality

Allan Peterson

Allan Peterson is the author of six collections of poetry, This Luminous : New and Selected Poems , forthcoming from Panhandler Books in 2019; Other Than They Seem (Tupelo Press, 2016), winner of the Snowbound Chapbook Prize; Precarious (42 Miles Press, 2014); Fragile Acts (McSweeney’s, 2012), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; As Much As (Salmon Poetry, 2011); and All the Lavish in Common (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. Peterson’s work has appeared in AGNI , The Gettysburg Review , The Nation , and ZYZZYVA , as well as several anthologies. He is a recipient of fellowships from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the State of Florida. Peterson is a visual artist as well as a poet and previously served as chair of the Visual Arts Department and director of the Anna Lamar Switzer Center for Visual Arts at Pensacola State College.