A. Leigh Peters won an Academy of American Poets Prize in 2010. She has been published in numerous literary magazines and journals, including The American Library of Poetry,
Oberon Poetry Magazine, Third Wednesday, Avatar Review, Café Shapiro Anthology, Fortnight Literary Press, Angelic Dynamo and two Northern Michigan chapbooks as well as an anthology from the Poets’ Night Out series. She is studying English Language & Literature, Creative Writing and Global Media Studies at the University of Michigan. She lives and works in Traverse City and in downtown Ann Arbor.
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What You Do with a Daisy
let us live
in a crib of limbs
and leaves, as robins do
leave this house behind
crawl first
then fly to our nests
newly built in trees of birch
and in the twigs
the scent of fresh paint
can make us feel
at home, still
young and dancing
Stone
It was a dream
I had twice when you were dead
because your brother killed you,
and it was just shy of an accident.
The outcome could not be
confidential. With
reason, with deception—
What swells underneath might
be some rotted subculture, an odd
antithesis to the vultures of
conspiracy. You know
hipsters do not want to find happiness
which is why they are not hippies.
Sometimes if you wonder too little
(or if you wonder too much)
you end up dying flat and cold
like the short, low strike of a left-
side key on seventy grand
pianos in an empty marble parlor
all around you white, white
room and black, earthy creaks.
Not a Nature Poem
The obtuse laze of Adirondack backs
No Amish men can bend this way
One white carnation in the middle pot
Red right and left, a dozen each
The seam in the screen needs a sewing machine
Or hands idle all day to be nimble just now
The bay is a vase, its outline the shore
Pregnant at the base, the narrow pouring spout
No wine is so blue; what water is? (It's the sky)
These red carnations or this white
If my skin is these shades, all in-betweens
It might be so clear no one can see
I could disappear into that tear
Sit and lean back, then jump the rail
And forward soar to the gourd of lake water
Plop like a skipped stone or a cork too thin for stopping
There— out there— the body there—
Not a rip on the screen, not a smudge on the glass
Of the bottle keeping all the translucence in—
I sink, I float, watch me fix this water
Watch me behind the glass fix this water to Merlot
Lunch Hour
came to
the library
and on
the way back
found
a sign:
Sidetraxx
OPEN
5 PM daily
it is 2:05
the dumpster smells
but the lake looks fine