Kathy Alma Peterson's poetry page

My Poems

April Gothic

Across the lake the private cemetery
recedes into sublime gloom—
headstones darken, the headlights
of a single car grope for
an opening in the high iron gate.
Soon it will be October—the fatigued
leaves will flutter but feel nothing.
Caretakers will rake and rake,
bag and bag; the sky
will shudder and go blank.
The exuberant new leaves, the rain
pointing long dark fingers at
the pale trees. I have forgotten
to cover my head, and must cup
my tender ears or the wind
will think I’m listening when,
in its fury, it names me still part
of the world, so in its way

Watching My Cat Investigate a Dark Mark on the Floor, I Understand the Grand Illusion...
Until the Next Time Life Distracts Me

Sip by sip coffee
leaves my cup
tips over almost
nothing spills but one drop
darker than alive

In the Details

The only room my reliables and I found free.
The table our deliberate spills mapped a new world.
The buttery crackers and the ferments served.
The small room my familiars and I spoke openly.
The surface our words stuck to and resisted.
The chokecherries and brine I served sweet.
The pillaged room he ran from for perhaps air.
The repast to be past me and indifferent.
The plenty of everything out there to be breathed.
The broom closet I would rather nest since you.
The sheen of the end table deters my preserves.
The lowly bread warns I may be a widow jarred.
The corner breath returns not to a rightful mind.
The oil cloth a suitable size for one heel dragging.
The chocolate frogs arranged on the bone china.

Light Enters the Courtyard From Above
I.
About his distance she lengthened and grew grave. The corners
of her mouth would not for any wit be upturned, encouraging
tiny cracks and peeling over time, the same caramel color as walls
behind which papery red petals fall, one for every confidence.
II.
Insofar as purses fall open, it was true she carried hers unclasped
allowing foreign coins to pour forth the while. She was there to stay
where interior fountains switched themselves on, something forgotten
by the ancients the moment their extremities could not be felt.
III.
The buildings lean out but not far enough
to catch her cautioning in jagged Spanish or the banter among friends
as it recedes this time of afternoon not dusk but little evening
when stone saints also retreat farther into personal crevices.
IV.
To walk the gardens out of town and know nature
is a reservoir of strange greenness, its bands of blue and brown
and browner farther down. Here the mouths of supplicants, leaves
of succulents not gray, not lavender (mauve, she said, her voice volcanic).

Slipway

In gel-injected shoes the nurses bob
among the tubes and trays like tugboats
in a quarantined harbor. To the hulls
of weather-beaten ships, they fasten
ropes and straps, pull the vessels
dockside, steering lights flashing.
I know almost nothing of the harbor
and less of tugs. I watch the jaunty helpers
deftly steer the unwieldy, the wrecked—
lean against the rails of my mother’s bed
where her plastic tethers are arranged
like riggings to a sail for all I know.
My mother sees my pirate clothes, my little
cheerless flag, and thinks I smuggled in
the sponges on sticks, small and green,
suffused with cool water— so minimal,
so much better than nothing.

Out the Window, Past Aural

Say that nothing the trees are saying
means anything to me:
Summer is a perilous time for what would narrow.
Glance; go quickly on –

Ticked flank of a grassy beast chewing up
the long view, stirred by winds gunning…The leaves press urgently on
the glass – roughly, yet
with a modicum of manners. Mark my place
under a dog-eared cloud –
tamp down the meadow like that anvil of a cow. That said, attention paid is free admission –
field and pond parceled as I parse:
pasture with argument of daisies: a spill
of white, the sky’s velvet bones…The undergreen goes nearly black
and startled daisies crane their necks –
swallows cut and sew –
What has grown there, growing –
At the end of every stalk tremendous sway –

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