September 2016
Laurel Peterson
laurelpeterson@att.net
laurelpeterson@att.net
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
Eve and Adam and God in the Garden
I
Beautiful, red sweetness.
Desire comes to me and I burn.
Adam won’t mind.
Just one bite.
II.
Bitch.
We had everything: apples
and sheep, wheat and mosquito,
pillars of salt and sand, water
like eyes; now, all is stunted trees
and parched beasts.
This is your doing.
Kneel to me.
III.
Moments ago I made you
and already you are taken
by that silken voice,
that smell like compost or bird dung.
Look, he is digesting a mouse;
you can see its shape inside his.
Look, he spits death from his fangs.
I
Beautiful, red sweetness.
Desire comes to me and I burn.
Adam won’t mind.
Just one bite.
II.
Bitch.
We had everything: apples
and sheep, wheat and mosquito,
pillars of salt and sand, water
like eyes; now, all is stunted trees
and parched beasts.
This is your doing.
Kneel to me.
III.
Moments ago I made you
and already you are taken
by that silken voice,
that smell like compost or bird dung.
Look, he is digesting a mouse;
you can see its shape inside his.
Look, he spits death from his fangs.
©2016 Laurel Peterson
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