Allan Peterson is the author of five books, recently Precarious (42 Miles Press, 2014), a finalist for The Lascaux Prize); Fragile Acts (McSweeney's Poetry Series), a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle and Oregon Book Awards, and All the Lavish in Common, winner of the Juniper Prize. His Other Than They Seem won the Snowbound Chapbook Prize from Tupelo Press. This Luminous, a New and Selected, is forthcoming. His website can be found here. ---------
Identity
There are those who count windows in a fly’s wing
like clergy trying to see through scripture to a ghost
There was an instructive caption for an app saying
“hover to expand” meaning mouseover and suddenly
the leaded glass windows in Chartres and Reims
could be identified as cousins to Delphinia picta
the picture-winged fly Hope is like feeling something
is wanting to be discovered Same for entomology
Reading
I separate pages dream count from thread count
sheet sounds from the lovers moving under them
and breath taken from vast breath available
polish from rubbing each thing with that capacity
silver yes but leather and wind against the house
those pages themselves hours taken from a day
and retaken with rereading so hours open hours
within them the house now glowing my heat ghost
still there in the chair by the window if I leave