Laurel Peterson Verse-Virtual 2016 May

May 2016

I’ve been writing since I was eight, despite being told that I shouldn’t. Writing revealed too much. This is why I tell my students they should never be afraid to put the truth on the page. I’m a community college English professor, who alternately loves and despairs of her students. I’ve written lots of different things—newspaper columns, academic stuff, poems (including two chapbooks and a forthcoming full-length collection) and a couple of mystery novels, one of which will be published this spring by Barking Rain Press. I have the very great pleasure of serving the town of Norwalk, Connecticut, as its poet laureate. At this very moment, my dog is sniffing through my trash for a draft of something to chew on. My website: www.laurelpeterson.com

Tuesday Night Open Mic

His briefcase carries
his heart for him
inside leather walls
corners rubbed
down to the cardboard frame

no room for extra stuff
Thin Mints
oranges
bottled water
travel in plastic grocery bags
When he takes off his coat
years of odor
gust out

Tonight
he reads his sister’s eulogy
ten years ago tomorrow
she died
Describing her to strangers
reveals
what the Air Force,
war, sixty years
beat from him
one wing stroke at a time