Michael C. Peterson
Michael C. Peterson Poems
For fury the Penitent may say, My Lord, if discretion
be the better part of valor then let me
be the screen door, and beyond it, the parade
...
So long on Tantrum now distinction suffers.
The winding of the wind, the drag
of sun against the puny fleet, and nothing
left to spare its use to you, Crusoe,
...
Something of occupation, something about
withdrawal. The lecturer said
that when the bevy wings or lands together—
...
When gluttony is less than ruinous we
give it milder claim. Never
was there enough of what we wanted.
We named this Comfort, we
...
One summer you suppose another summer
will be ransomed—at last—
the stark-rocking maple now willfully green,
the house like a boat like a house,
...
Vigilance go slowly, our ear so hard this
year to the rail. Bantam seed, who
nonetheless explodes from drink, suppose:
the high lake winters over. That
...
Repeater—
then you played the summer's
underwhelming passage, exactly,
yet so much left to perform, or to be poured
...
I tell you then, your master is never so far from
you, you never have to raise your
voice. It is right that you understand what
you are saying, it is good this doing
...
You didn't want to go to the sea, the base
nearby, its simple name, north-
something or something once exact, crackling
lately only as
...
Michael C. Peterson Biography
Michael C. Peterson’s poems are forthcoming in journals such as The Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, Fence, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of awards from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and The MacDowell Colony. He is completing his PhD as an Elliston Fellow in Poetry at the University of Cincinnati.)
The Best Poem Of Michael C. Peterson
For Fury The Penitent May Say
For fury the Penitent may say, My Lord, if discretion
be the better part of valor then let me
be the screen door, and beyond it, the parade
rolling forth, heat and wheel, equal
among themselves, a same compressive thing,
grandeur through the street.
But all things being equal, the heat the wheel—
and this includes the heart—burn out
break down, what's left. Not the quiet, it must
be loud. It must answer to whatever
death by becoming whatever of it—not itself
but something in the style of light if
light could be its sound, my tonguing like the
clapper of a bell, its word worn round.
For sleep the Penitent will say, My Lord, make me
the tributary, the canal, the sluice and its
solutions pouring out, the folio sheet halved and
folded, the other body next to me, a lathe
turning over. I keep the world up with my
raggedness. I try to shut the summer down.
I bellowed bead by bead, opaque, mother-
strand, strung like fish, I did it twice.
O my mother, incorruptible, these words they
rise to stand outside me, speak
against me like a heart I never recognize or see,
me—make me the pain fixed to one place.
So For pain the Penitent—My Lord, just so, just so.
Frontier becomes me and its place,
obediently cold. Glorify the lung, the nose that
gives to it the pine. The unruly town
inside a forest, now dry. Glorify the eye and salt
that gives to it the command. The silent
town beside the sea, its blue ebb. Glorify the rule
that keeps me here which gives the brain
no say. Water in water out. Give me say, let me
thrive again. O Jesu. O Jesu thou. Give.
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