November 2017
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
GINGERBREAD QUEEN
Steven King’s Garden, Susan Spivack, RAC, May 2017
I wait in this little house,
in this flowery wood
with my grape sky,
for children.
My flowers smell sweet as sugar cookies,
spicy like ginger and pepper.
Their colors warm the skin
like a lit stove
on a winter’s night.
Come walk my sweet, winding path.
Notice my curtains, parted and welcoming.
I haven’t turned the oven on yet.
I’m waiting for you.
UNBORN DAUGHTER
She’s always flying around the corner,
out of sight. I catch only her gold hair
like a wave of honey or Chinese silk.
She’s never there—just the empty space
where she manifested just a moment ago,
before she disappeared again into that
funny curtain of time, opaque and thin,
ripples in the wind of her invisible passing.
GINGERBREAD QUEEN
Steven King’s Garden, Susan Spivack, RAC, May 2017
I wait in this little house,
in this flowery wood
with my grape sky,
for children.
My flowers smell sweet as sugar cookies,
spicy like ginger and pepper.
Their colors warm the skin
like a lit stove
on a winter’s night.
Come walk my sweet, winding path.
Notice my curtains, parted and welcoming.
I haven’t turned the oven on yet.
I’m waiting for you.
UNBORN DAUGHTER
She’s always flying around the corner,
out of sight. I catch only her gold hair
like a wave of honey or Chinese silk.
She’s never there—just the empty space
where she manifested just a moment ago,
before she disappeared again into that
funny curtain of time, opaque and thin,
ripples in the wind of her invisible passing.
© 2017 Laurel Peterson
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