December 2015
I am an English professor at a two-year college where I teach writing (creative and expository) and literature. My poetry has appeared in a number of small magazines, and I have two poetry chapbooks, That’s the Way the Music Sounds, from Finishing Line Press (2009), and Talking to the Mirror, from The Last Automat Press (2010). In addition to loving poetry, I have written a mystery novel, Shadow Notes, which will be published next spring by Barking Rain Press. I live with another English professor and poet, Dr. Van Hartmann, and would rather be rich than famous. My website: www.laurelpeterson.com
The Architecture of Insanity
It looks like a normal house:
pretty front door,
painted a shade of red
a trifle too bright, white lace curtains
at the windows
that never part to reveal curious
eyes or a twitching cat.
The chimney’s missing
a brick or two;
the pointing crumbles
so slightly
one must stand near it
to see the hard knots of concrete
gathered at its base.
Inside, everything is neat,
ordered so precisely that
there are dust outlines
if the object is moved.
Or perhaps,
every night,
things are moved ever so slightly,
so one trips
in the dark,
on the way to the loo.
Or maybe the inside
is a riot of color,
cherry spilling into
neon green
into electric blue
into egg yolk yellow
into the orange of all sunsets
rolled into a sticky marmalade
finger-painted on the walls.
The yard grows knee-deep grass,
a statement—
it’s like the prairie—
look at the wildflowers—
or perhaps is planted with impatiens
one white one
every precisely measured six inches.
It’s what it said to do
on the tag.
Either way,
you don’t notice
until it’s far too late,
until you’re seated with a cup of tea
and a plate of cookies,
the grass and mosquitoes tickling
your calves,
that you have become
part of the tableau.
-originally published in The Saranac Review, Issue 8, 2012-2013
It looks like a normal house:
pretty front door,
painted a shade of red
a trifle too bright, white lace curtains
at the windows
that never part to reveal curious
eyes or a twitching cat.
The chimney’s missing
a brick or two;
the pointing crumbles
so slightly
one must stand near it
to see the hard knots of concrete
gathered at its base.
Inside, everything is neat,
ordered so precisely that
there are dust outlines
if the object is moved.
Or perhaps,
every night,
things are moved ever so slightly,
so one trips
in the dark,
on the way to the loo.
Or maybe the inside
is a riot of color,
cherry spilling into
neon green
into electric blue
into egg yolk yellow
into the orange of all sunsets
rolled into a sticky marmalade
finger-painted on the walls.
The yard grows knee-deep grass,
a statement—
it’s like the prairie—
look at the wildflowers—
or perhaps is planted with impatiens
one white one
every precisely measured six inches.
It’s what it said to do
on the tag.
Either way,
you don’t notice
until it’s far too late,
until you’re seated with a cup of tea
and a plate of cookies,
the grass and mosquitoes tickling
your calves,
that you have become
part of the tableau.
-originally published in The Saranac Review, Issue 8, 2012-2013
©2015 Laurel Peterson