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Andrew K. Peterson

CONTENTS

  1. My Falsetto Leopard Print Is A Dream Of Alec Baldwin

  2. I Seldom Think of Creatures That Devour in the Night

  3. Reparations for a Riot Deferred

  4. Work Song

  5. Dude I Like See Your Tracers In This Back Issue Of Time Or, Imagining The Sun As The Absolute Asshole Of The Universe

  6. Ambitions of the Marshfield High Graduating Class of 1997

  7. Looming Riddle

  8. Seven Minutes in Courtyard Rain Outside Anthropologie

  9. Sharkwrecked!

  10. Someone Plays Mary J. Blige’s “Real Love” On Repeat 14 Times

MY FALSETTO LEOPARD PRINT IS A DREAM OF ALEC BALDWIN

For Joe Cooper

Driving home from visiting I imagine what terrible farmers we’d make if we were farmers 

We’d be terrible defending our farm from the roaming German hoard of radioactive wild boars

But we’d probably be good at letting wildflowers shape the fields while livestock grazes in sunshine

The road curves contracts and expands a butterfly tandem

files a spiral groove above 

I listen to Fleet Foxes

I listen to Pet Sounds

I remember looking up from our collaborations as you lurched towards the bathroom to puke, feeling bad like I should help, but what’s the point, though I see how it’s a gesture, vomiting’s a private (and automatic) thing

I listen to High Violet (think private thoughts)

I think “my falsetto leopard print is a dream of Alec Baldwin”

I remember hugging goodbye on your lawn this morning you were wearing your pink Hot Whiskey tee while your landlord watched us (I wasn’t embarrassed)  

I listen to Love’s Forever Changes and remember how we talk jokes until the words tip in place a little

If we were farmers, we could clear the range and wander while

grass grows on the bark of a fallen trunk 

Maybe we wouldn’t make such bad farmers really

I SELDOM THINK OF CREATURES THAT DEVOUR IN THE NIGHT

For Joe Cooper

dreamt about transformer bugs

half-grasshopper half-scorpion

100% transformer bug

the attendant keeps falling into me provocatively 

in a big space station

sorry I don’t know any good

homophonic translation essays 

 

(this is the non-dream part):

 

I find a Jesus palm card at the drive-thru ATM 

you tell me not to use because I’m not a car but do anyway

on the card Jesus spoons a passed-out dude

purple tee & dirty jeans

Jesus looks like a soft lover who might playfully bite your neck

if you say his stigmatas looks like miniature assholes

 

I don’t think Jesus’ stigmatas look like miniature assholes

Do you think Jesus’ stigmatas look like miniature assholes? 

 

I tuck Jesus and his friend in your peppermint tin

now every time you reach for fresh breath you can consider

whether Jesus’ stigmatas look like miniature assholes

 

I changed my mind a little Jesus’ stigmatas look more like

miniature assholes than they did before

 

Do you know the joy of being forgiven?

SOMEONE PLAYS MARY J. BLIGE'S "REAL LOVE" ON REPEAT 14 TIMES

For Brandon Brown

Waiting for the light to change, a car goes too far and backs out the intersection. Change the

station Autumn Sweater’s on prepping to talk with a friend in

pain. Read “even through the pain you experience, you might try to imagine the ache connects you with all suffering beings,

alive in all the realms, connecting.” In Detroit, crack dealers diversify to include Oxycontin.

Biology, economics.

By the gas station, a landscaper in a Nautica tee is tossing roots in a barrel. Signs on the lawns

around town say, VOTE NO. I don’t want to; I won’t. It must be spring, to hear the peepers

muck the dark on Oak. Someone sings, “Hold tenderly to what remains.”

 

What’s this pill in my pocket? Take it, and await enlightenment.

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