Ordinarily — Blackbird Archive

← v4n2, Fall 2005

I look at the carved Christ of Autun

whose hair has never moved

blankly judging souls without looking

and the pelican whose thumb feather

says hand and the demon capitals

the safe ones most satisfied and sated

in their fine cruelties

I do not go near them They are false

The grim set of a chisel made them

This is not a typical day

Ordinarily cicadas would wind up

I would be writing with feathers

or with reeds Ink would be soot and water

Cicadas would wind down

By midday I would be so historical

I would write birds are the carriers of content

and so says the blackbird

from the rushes flashing his scapulars

art religion language

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.